It's one of rock music’s most enduring myths – and most playful creative tools.
We're talking backmasking – the process of recording a sound or message backward onto a track meant to be played forward. While the technique originated with the avant-garde 'musique concrète' and 1960s psychedelic experimentation, it reached a fever pitch of cultural notoriety during the late 1970s and 1980s. This era saw the 'Satanic Panic', a period where fundamentalist groups and concerned parents became convinced that rock and heavy metal bands were using subliminal messages to corrupt the youth.
Whether used as a legitimate artistic choice, a cheeky prank to troll conspiracy theorists, or a purely accidental phonetic coincidence, backmasking continues to fascinate. It taps into our deep-seated curiosity about the 'unseen' and the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia, where the brain insists on finding familiar patterns in random noise. Here are 15 tracks that took the world down the rabbit hole.
Backmasking tracks
1. The Beatles – 'Rain' (1966)
Widely considered the first intentional use of backmasking in popular music, 'Rain' was born from John Lennon’s late-night experimentation with a Reel-to-Reel tape recorder. After returning from a session, a tired Lennon accidentally threaded the tape backward and was mesmerized by the ethereal sound of his own voice. He insisted on incorporating the effect into the song's coda.
If you listen to the end of the track, you’ll hear Lennon singing the line "Rain, when the rain comes, they run and hide their heads" completely in reverse. It set the stage perfectly for the psychedelic textures of the band's 1966 magnum opus, Revolver.
2. Led Zeppelin – 'Stairway to Heaven' (1971)
Arguably rock's greatest year, 1971 also give us the most infamous alleged (crucial, that) case of backmasking in history. In 1982, televangelist Paul Crouch claimed that playing this rock masterpiece backward revealed a tribute to Satan. Specifically, the 'bustle in your hedgerow' section supposedly contains the words: 'Here's to my sweet Satan... the one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan.' Robert Plant has expressed deep frustration over this, noting that the band spent enough time trying to get the lyrics to sound right forward, let alone backward. It remains a classic example of phonetic coincidence fuelled by suggestion.
3. Pink Floyd – 'Empty Spaces' (1979)
On The Wall, Roger Waters decided to give the 'Paul is Dead' investigators exactly what they were looking for – with a wink. In the left channel, there is a section of garbled speech. When reversed, Waters says: "Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont." Before he can finish, another voice interrupts: "Roger! Carolyne's on the phone!" It was a brilliant meta-joke aimed directly at the fans who spent their weekends playing records backward.
4. Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) – 'Fire on High' (1975)
It seems suitable that a band so obsessed with the sound of The Beatles (Side Two of Abbey Road pretty much wrote the ELO blueprint) should pay them the wry tribute of indulging in a spot of backmasking. In fact, by 1975, Jeff Lynne had grown annoyed by accusations of Satanic backmasking on their previous album Eldorado that he decided to open this instrumental track with a blatant, intentional message.
The reversed voice (that of drummer Bev Bevan) at the beginning says: 'The music is reversible, but time is not. Turn back! Turn back! Turn back!' By being so literal, Lynne hoped to mock the absurdity of the hysteria while simultaneously creating one of the most recognizable backmasked openings in classic rock history.
5. Iron Maiden – 'Still Life' (1983)
Following the 'Satanist' labels slapped on the band after The Number of the Beast, Iron Maiden took a comedic approach to their 1983 follow-up Piece of Mind. They included a backmasked message featuring drummer Nicko McBrain imitating idiomatic British gibberish. Reversed, he says: "What ho, said the t'ing with the three bonce, don't meddle with things you don't understand." Followed by a lusty belch.
It was a direct, playful jab at the religious groups who were 'meddling' in the band's creative business.
6. Slayer – 'Hell Awaits' (1985)
Fellow metallers Slayer utilized backmasking to genuinely chilling effect. The opening of the title track of their 1985 album Hell Awaits features a wall of deep, guttural noise that sounds like the ambient roar of a crowd. When played backward, the voices are chanting 'Join us!' over and over again. Unlike the jokes above from ELO or Maiden, Slayer used the technique to enhance the dark, occult aesthetic of the record, making the listener feel like a participant in the very hell the lyrics described.
7. The Beatles – 'Revolution 9' (1968)
This is the 'Patient Zero' of backmasking conspiracy theories. During the 'Paul is Dead' craze of the late 1960s, fans obsessed over this sound collage from the White Album. The most famous claim is that the looped voice repeating 'Number nine' sounds exactly like 'Turn me on, dead man' when reversed. While Lennon maintained it was just a random tape loop from a Royal Academy of Music examination, the 'message' became the cornerstone of the era's most famous urban legend.
8. Soundgarden – '665' (1988)
In a move of pure Seattle grunge irony, Soundgarden parodied the 'Number of the Beast' by naming a track '665' (one digit short of the devil). Throughout the song, Chris Cornell’s vocals are backmasked. For those expecting a dark incantation, the reveal was a letdown: Cornell is actually chanting 'Santa, I love you baby', 'My Christmas king' and 'Got what I need'. It remains one of the funniest subversions of the backmasking trope in rock history.
9. Prince – 'Darling Nikki' (1984)
At the end of this notoriously provocative track from Purple Rain, Prince included a backmasked vocal over a choir and crashing rain. Given the song's sexual content, many expected something scandalous. However, the message was actually deeply religious. Reversed, Prince says: "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon. Coming, coming soon." It was a classic Prince move –blending the profane and the sacred in a way that left the moral majority confused.
10. Ozzy Osbourne – 'Suicide Solution' (1980)
This song was at the centre of a 1986 lawsuit after a teenager tragically took his own life. The family claimed the song contained subliminal messages urging the listener to 'Get the gun and shoot'. During the trial, the hidden audio was scrutinized. It turned out that while there is a low-volume vocal track beneath the main mix, it is simply Ozzy muttering about the effects of alcohol (the song is actually about the 'solution' of liquid alcohol, not ending one's life).
The court eventually ruled that no subliminal commands were present. Although Ozzy’s proposed defence that, if he was going to sneak a subliminal message into one of his songs, it would be the more pragmatic ‘Buy more records!’, didn't make it into the courtroom.
11. Judas Priest – 'Better By You, Better Than Me' (1978)
Another case that went to trial, this track from the British metallers' 1978 album Stained Class involved the claim that a faint exhaling sound in the background was a backmasked command to 'Do it'. Vocalist Rob Halford famously testified that the sound was a mere breathing artifact from a vocal take. To prove how ridiculous the claim was, he showed that if you play other parts of the album backward, you can hear 'messages' like "I asked for a peppermint" or "In the middle of the night, my mother made me a cheese toastie."
12. The Mars Volta – 'Eunuch Provocateur' (2002)
For fans of modern progressive rock, the backmasking on 'Eunuch Provocateur' from The Mars Volta's 2002 EP Tremulant is a masterclass in recursive songwriting. Toward the end of the track, the music dissolves into a flurry of reversed audio. When played backward, these segments reveal, among other things, references to the children's nursery rhyme 'Itsy Bitsy Spider', here given a dark, new soundworld.
13. Cheap Trick – 'Gonna Raise Hell' (1979)
On the 1979 album Dream Police, Cheap Trick leaned into the era’s occult-obsessed rock tropes with the sinister, disco-infused 'Gonna Raise Hell'. During the song’s frantic, chaotic climax, a deep, distorted voice can be heard buried in the mix. When reversed, the message is revealed to be: "You know Satan holds the key to the lock." While it sounded like a dark incantation, the band – known for their power-pop wit – likely included it as a theatrical nod to the growing Satanic Panic hysteria of the late seventies.
14. The White Stripes – 'Walking With a Ghost' (2005)
On the 2005 EP Walking with a Ghost, Jack White utilized backmasking to add a literal 'spectral' layer to his cover of the Tegan and Sara track. Near the song's end, a distorted, ghostly voice murmurs in the background. When reversed, it reveals White repeating the phrase: 'Get out of my head'. This intentional use of the technique perfectly mirrors the song's themes of being haunted by a persistent memory, turning a simple pop-rock cover into a claustrophobic, psychological experience.
15. Deep Purple – 'Stormbringer' (1974)
The title track of Deep Purple’s 1974 album Stormbringer features one of the most famous examples of gibberish backmasking in hard rock. At the very beginning of the song, David Coverdale utters a series of distorted, guttural sounds. When reversed, the message reveals Coverdale shouting the profanities uttered by Linda Blair’s character when she is questioned by the priest in the iconic 1973 horror film The Exorcist.
Rather than a dark, occult incantation, the message was a crude studio prank designed to test the limits of what they could hide in plain sight. It remains a classic example of the band’s irreverent sense of humour during the height of their mid-70s fame.
16. The Bloodhound Gang – 'Lift Your Head Up High (And Blow Your Brains Out)' (1996)
In the 90s, the Bloodhound Gang used backmasking to poke fun at the backmasking controversy that had pervaded the previous decade. Throughout the song, they included a message that, when reversed, issues the listener with the nonsensical instruction, "Devil child, wake up and eat Chef Boyardee Beefaroni". It was a perfect encapsulation of how the 90s alternative scene viewed the previous decade's moral panics – as something to be laughed at and satirized.
17. Robert Fripp – 'Hååden Two' (1979)
On his 1979 solo album Exposure, King Crimson mastermind Robert Fripp used backmasking to inject surreal British humor into his avant-garde soundscapes. In the track 'Hååden Two', a voice heard in reverse reveals the line: "One thing is for sure, the sheep is not a creature of the air." This is a direct quote from the Monty Python 'Flying Sheep' sketch. By hiding a comedy reference in a dense experimental track, Fripp playfully subverted the era's self-serious Satanic backmasking trends.
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