Buzz
While some artists hide messages or images on their album covers, others prefer to embed cryptic clues in their liner notes (like Taylor Swift once did). A few, however, took a subtler route: through a technique called backmasking, where iconic bands are said to have left covert messages in certain tracks.
Backmasking works by playing a track in reverse (preferably on a turntable), revealing hidden messages that aren’t immediately audible. It’s like an audio version of a Rorschach test—sometimes you hear things that might not be there at all.
From rumors of devil worship to all sorts of wild theories, the backmasked songs below have sparked a variety of fun (and sometimes creepy) speculations.
1. and 2. “Revolution 9” and “I’m So Tired” // The Beatles
One of the most notorious conspiracy theories in music is that Paul McCartney died in a 1966 car crash and was secretly replaced by a lookalike. Some fans believe the avant-garde track “Revolution 9” from The Beatles’ White Album, which was influenced by Yoko Ono, contains a key ‘hint’ supporting this theory.
When you listen to the song normally, you’ll hear John Lennon repeatedly chanting “Number 9” in the intro. But if you reverse the track, some listeners claim they can hear him saying “Turn me on, dead man” amid the distorted sound collage.
This isn’t the only Beatles song rumored to contain backmasked messages. At the end of “I’m So Tired”—another track from the White Album—Lennon seems to utter some incoherent sounds. Yet, when you play it backward, it sounds eerily like he’s saying, “Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him.”
Naturally, the “Paul is Dead” rumor is just that—a rumor. The real Paul McCartney is very much alive and continues to create music for fans worldwide. However, McCartney did address the urban legend directly, telling LIFE magazine in 1969 that the rumor likely began because he hadn’t been in the press much lately.
3. “Stairway to Heaven” // Led Zeppelin
For decades, Led Zeppelin has been plagued by rumors linking them to Satanic worship, much of which can be traced to guitarist Jimmy Page's well-documented fascination with the occult. (Page famously owned an occult bookstore in London in the early '70s, and also lived in Boleskine House, a Scottish mansion previously owned by Aleister Crowley, a notorious British writer and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a mystical secret society.)
While there’s no solid proof that Page made a pact with the Devil, he never explicitly denied the Satanic rumors. In a famous Rolling Stone interview, Page remarked, “I don’t really want to go on about my personal beliefs or my involvement in magic. I’m not interested in turning anybody on to anybody that I’m turned on to. If people want to find things, they find them themselves.”
Whether true or not, these rumors fueled controversy around one of the band’s most iconic tracks, “Stairway to Heaven.” In 1982, televangelist Paul Crouch claimed the song contained hidden satanic messages that could only be heard when played in reverse. Crouch suggested that starting around the 4:20 mark, you could hear Robert Plant singing: “Here’s to my sweet Satan, the one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan, he’ll give you, he’ll give you 666, there was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.”
The band has consistently denied the existence of backmasking in the track, with Plant even directly addressing the allegations. In a 1983 Musician interview, Plant explained, “To me it’s very sad, because ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was written with every best intention. And as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end, that’s not my idea of making music.”
4. “Nightmare/The Dreamtime” // Motörhead
With Lemmy Kilmister’s rebellious persona and Motörhead’s raw, hard-hitting rock sound (which laid the foundation for NWOBHM, the new wave of British heavy metal), the band has always had a gritty reputation. There are even claims that they hid secret messages in their music, particularly on the track “Nightmare/The Dreamtime” from their ninth album, 1916.
The song begins with some garbled growling from Lemmy, but when you reverse the track, you can clearly make out this intense message: “Now tell me about your miserable little lives. I do not subscribe to your superstitious, narrow-minded flights of paranoia. I and people like me will always prevail! You will never stifle our free speech in any country in the world.”
While the backmasking rumor on this track was never officially confirmed by the band, it’s quite clear—especially compared to other tracks on this list. Some speculate that the reversed message was a response to the Parents Resource Music Center (PMRC), which was campaigning to censor heavy metal and other ‘offensive’ music in the 1980s. In one video clip, Lemmy compared the PMRC to McCarthyism, saying: “People are scared of them, but what no one seems to realize is if you wouldn’t be scared of them, they couldn’t do anything.”
5. “Better by You, Better than Me” // Judas Priest
Speaking of the NWOBHM, Judas Priest is another British hard rock band that technically predates it but helped shape the genre. The band’s influence goes beyond metal, though—back in 1990, they found themselves at the center of a lawsuit involving the controversial issue of backmasking and subliminal messages in their music.
The suit alleged that the band, along with their label CBS, was to blame for a tragic shooting incident in Sparks, Nevada, in December 1985. Two young men, 18-year-old Raymond Belknap and 20-year-old James Vance, attempted suicide with a 12-gauge shotgun.
Belknap died immediately, while Vance survived but endured severe facial injuries before passing away three years later from a drug overdose. In the lawsuit, their families claimed that the band’s cover of the 1969 Spooky Tooth song, “Better by You, Better than Me,” contained subliminal messages—specifically “Let’s be dead” and “Do it”—which they believed influenced the pair to take their own lives.
After thoroughly examining the track (both backward and forward at different speeds), audio engineers found no evidence of any hidden messages. The case was ultimately dismissed. “It was absolutely ridiculous. It really was,” Rob Halford, the band’s frontman, later told Yahoo Music in 2015. “We love our fans. We would never put anything in our music with the intent of harming them.”
6. “Empty Spaces” // Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd is famous for their avant-garde music and deep, contemplative lyrics, so it's not hard to believe that the progressive rock band might have experimented with backmasking in their tracks. Fans who are keen to uncover hidden meanings in Pink Floyd's music don’t need to look too far: Just turn to their 1979 rock opera, The Wall, particularly the song “Empty Spaces,” which is said to contain a bizarre secret message.
When you reverse the track, you can hear bassist Roger Waters playfully addressing the listeners: “Hello, Looker. Congratulations, you’ve just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the funny farm, Chalfont.” The message even includes a brief interruption from producer James Guthrie, who says, “Roger! Carolyne’s on the phone!”—a nod to Roger Waters’s wife at the time, Carolyne Christie.
7. “665” // Soundgarden
In 1988, Seattle grunge pioneers Soundgarden dropped their debut album Ultramega OK, which cleverly poked fun at the alleged Satanic messages in rock music, especially through backmasking on the track “665” (a playful spin on the infamous “666,” the so-called “number of the beast”).
If you reverse the song, you’ll hear frontman Chris Cornell sing: “Hail Santa! I love you, baby. Oh Santa, got what I need … my Christmas king. Santa is my king! I love you, Santa baby. Got what I need.” Cornell even humorously commented on the track in a 2009 interview with The Guardian, saying, “People asked—in all seriousness—‘Are you guys Satanists?’”
8. “Cut Up Angels” // The Used
In 2004, emo rockers The Used dropped their second album, In Love and Death. Heavily influenced by the personal tragedies of frontman Bert McCracken (who was dealing with the loss of his ex-girlfriend, who was also pregnant with his child, to a drug overdose during the album's recording), the album nonetheless became a huge success, earning platinum certification.
In Love and Death is also famous for the track “Cut Up Angels,” which many listeners believe contains backmasking right at the start. When you reverse the song, you can allegedly hear McCracken say, “Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is … ”—a nod to the famous track from The Beatles’ White Album.
9. “300 Mhz” // At The Drive-In
In 1999, post-hardcore band At The Drive-In released Vaya, a seven-track EP, and the second-to-last song on the album supposedly hides some eerie secret lyrics through backmasking.
Some listeners claim that if you play “300 Mhz” backwards, you can hear lead vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala utter some unsettling words starting at around 94 seconds: “... your enamel, made no reflection in our mirror, coughing up the coffins, cotton-candy coated teeth, these pockets were clinching all filled with teeth, amnesia proletariat ... in the unlikely event that sarcasm is an unfitting dress, amnesia proletariat ... ”
10. “Hell Awaits” // Slayer
As a key member of the legendary “Big Four” of thrash metal (with Metallica, Anthrax, and Megadeth), Slayer is certainly no stranger to producing music full of intensity and aggression. But according to some listeners, it's the title track from their 1985 album Hell Awaits that taps into the Satanic Panic fears that dominated the 1980s.
The first minute or so of the track sounds distorted, almost as if a demonic voice is muttering in the background. When played in reverse, many listeners believe the repeated chant of “Join us!” becomes clear, intensifying as it continues. You can even hear cries, as if someone is being tortured, before it all fades away and the song erupts into its signature thrash metal frenzy.
