Oh, my sweaty satin

Backwards masking is alive and well and living in your CD’s.

Some of you may remember Vinyl records. Big black things that we placed on antique devices known as turntables. Then we would place a tone arm with a needle in it to play the spinning LP which stood for long player. This crummy technology was what we used to reproduce music for about 100 years till CD’s made it as obsolete as a buggy whip. If you remember vinyl records then you probably remember the controversy that erupted when someone decided that you could hear stuff hidden in the grooves by spinning the records backwards. The most famous of these backwards masking messages was on the Beatles White Album. The song I’m so tired when spun backwards at the end seemed to say “Paul is dead, miss him, miss him.” Of course it was all nonsense but never the less people all over the world began to spin records backwards and discover all sorts of meaningful messages.

With the advent of CD’s the jig was up. The technology didn’t allow you to spin the things backwards to hear mysterious messages. That is until now.

An enterprising guy name of Jeff Milner has put up a website where he has several examples of what he says might be backwards masking.

The site has about a dozen songs that you can listen to in forward or backwards modes. The creepiest one is Britney Spears from the song Baby one more time when played backwards seems to say “Sleep with me I’m not too young”.
It literally gives me Goosebumps.

Almost all musicians deny any sort of intentional manipulation of their songs of this sort. One of the most famous retorts comes from a publicist named BP Fallon who was in the Led Zeppelin camp in their heyday. The song Stairway to Heaven played backwards is supposed to reveal a line that says “Oh, here’s to my sweet Satan.” BP Fallon suggests that it really says “Oh here’s to my sweaty Satin” in tribute to Jimmy Page’s stage costume.

I have been putting reverse messages in all of my rants for some time now. As a matter of fact if you play the words But then again I could be wrong sideways, a special message for you will be revealed.