Top 15 Secret Messages in Famous Songs

15. 99 Luftballons – Nena The 80’s German hit was a catchy jam with an endearing melody, not only in Germany, but everywhere in the world. But, unless you were fluent in German, the hit’s secret meaning went over most people’s heads. The US overlooked much of the German lyrics, which was basically the entire song. Then, once “99 Luftballons” started selling big-time, the band was asked to record it in English. This was when the secret meaning was revealed. Apparently, the song is actually about a post-nuclear battle. In it, the 99 red balloons caused a false alarm which set off a chain of events that led to the attack. As the balloons are let off into the horizon. A sad but poignant song. This message certainly doesn’t come across in the buoyant melody coupled with the foreign lyrics. But, really, it was only secret to those who couldn’t decode German. 14. Firework – Katy Perry Some people want their ashes sprinkled in the ocean when they pass away; others want to be buried in the family plot. But, pop stars might be a little more eccentric when it comes to disposing of their earthly frame. Katy Perry seems to prove they are by telling Billboard magazine the secret message behind her hit song, “Firework.” She is informing us all of her funeral arrangements. “Basically, I have this very [dark] idea...” she told Billboard magazine, “when I pass, I want to be put into a firework and shot across the sky over the Santa Barbara Ocean as my last hurrah.” That’s a pretty dark way to make a lasting final impression. 13. 10,000 Days – Tool While most secret messages hidden in famous songs are pretty simple to find, Tool wanted to make tools out of everyone by creating a DIY project out of their progressive metal songs. Some assembly required. The project isn’t even as simple as playing one song and then the next to create an epic of sorts. Rather, you must play them all at once. The songs? “10,000 Days,” “Wings for Marie,” and “Vigniti Tres.” The lengths of the latter two are 6:11 and 5:02, while “10,000 Days” runs 11:13, so the latter two play over the long track. “Vigniti Tres” must be played before “Wings for Marie” to correspond to “10,000 Days.” Knowing the secret to overlay these songs will certainly make you feel like you’re “in the know.” In fact, the weird noises of “Vigniti Tres” suddenly make sense when they’re coupled with the “10,000 Days” melody, while the vocals from “Wings for Marie” and “10,000 Days” combine to create alternative lyrics – i.e. a secret message. Tool has neither denied nor confirmed the claims that they created this intricate masterpiece…which makes one think that perhaps there’s something even more hidden to it. 12. Pumped Up Kicks – Foster the People When Foster the People turned out “Pumped Up Kicks,” many didn’t listen too closely to the dark lyrics behind the upbeat tune. Like “99 Luftballoons,” the song seemed to be about something a lot simpler and more peaceful than it actually is. Mark Foster, who wrote the composition, was inspired by “real-life topics”…those topics being shootings in schools. As he told CNN.com, “I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' when I began to read about the growing trend in teenage mental illness…I was scared to see where the pattern was headed if we didn't start changing the way we were bringing up the next generation.” Both Foster and the band’s bassist have ties to this epidemic, as Foster was, himself, a bully victim in high school, while Cubbie Fink, the bassist, had a cousin who lived through Columbine. Foster insists the song isn’t about condoning the attacks, but rather about talking to kids about a subject that is often avoided. Pumped-up kicks are the shoes worn by the troubled youth’s peers in school – kids that the listener can assume are well off enough to buy some expensive sneakers. Now, when you listen to the chorus, “All the other kids with the pumped up kicks better run, better run, faster than my bullet,” you might think differently about singing merrily along. 11. Revolution No. 9 – The Beatles There’s nothing like a good conspiracy theory to fire up Beatlemania. In 1968, the band released The White Album, which was quickly deemed a masterpiece. But it wasn’t until Beatles’ fans listened very closely to the hodgepodge of sound heard in “Revolution No. 9” that some started to wonder what this all might mean. As someone speaks the words “Number 9” over and over again, alongside crying, screaming, and what seems to be a crash of some sort, a fan decided to listen to the noise backward. And that’s when the discovery of the phrase, “Turn me on, dead man,” was made. This led many conspiracy theorists to feed the rumor mill a rumor that Paul McCartney had passed away. It also sparked the “Reverse Speech” movement, in which theorists started to believe subliminal messages were hidden in backmasking. Speech analyst, Jon Kelly, took it a step further, telling Huffpost: “That encrypted phrase — which I believe John Lennon found at EMI studios — was made by an engineer as an audio test. Yet, the message alluded to the counter-culture phrase ‘Tune in, turn on and drop out,’ as well as government mind control experiments.” Some honestly still think that the Paul McCartney that we see today is just a look-alike. Their “proof” is that he hasn’t turned out great hits like “Eleanor Rigby” or “Yesterday,” but rather pop fluff. Not enough proof in my book; maybe he just ran out of hits. 10. Single Ladies - Beyonce You probably wouldn’t think that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” would have any message beyond empowering ladies who are single, but you’d be wrong. At least, to some conspiracy theorists, you’d be dead wrong. The song, itself, isn’t chock full of backmasking and hidden meaning, but according to some, the music video allegedly proves that Beyonce worships Satan. How? Well, with all of its secret messages substantiating that claim, of course. As explained in a six-year-old post on the mediaexposed tumblr, the popular “Single Ladies” video – one of the best music videos of all times (at least, according to Kanye West) – is absolutely full of Satanic choreography. The first dance move that hints at the Satanic is when Beyonce and her two backup dancers, who are dressed in black, put their right hands on their hips and their left arms curved up. The right arm forms a wing, while the left forms snakes – which is of course the Winged Serpent, aka Satan. The dancers then begin to circle a beam of light, like three dark angels around The Winged Sun Disk, which was first worshipped by Lucifer, according to the post. The next blatant Satan-worshipping stance comes during the line “Don’t pay him any attention,” as Beyonce stands in the “God Almighty” stance, with her two backup dancers crouching below. This supposedly means one must pay God no attention. Next, they spell out “HALO” with their bodies in a Winged Serpent pose, with the left dancer forming the “L” with Beyonce, while the two dancers form an “H.” Beyonce does the Winged Serpent gesture again in the middle of the “sun.” And, according to the poster, Beyonce’s hit, “Halo,” is about being possessed by demons. This one’s a bit of a stretch, if you ask me. And, last but not least, in the final image, the “all-seeing eye” appears to Beyonce’s left. The worst is not yet over. According to this back-masked audiofile, Beyonce and her crew put out the following secret message: “Lean on me. Follow Lucifer. People are scared. Evil..No one might escape. People are scared. The world will bow down to Lucifer. Follow Lucifer. The world will not have fun. The world will bow down to me. Peoples’ tears fall. Ha ha ha, ha ha ha. Lean on me. Light & Darkness (repeated). He’s evil. Get in my head.” It seems a number of Pop singers have been accused of Satan worshiping. While it’s all very intriguing, it sure sounds like some blatant McCarthyism to me. 9. Revelation #9 – Marilyn Manson Following The Beatles lead, Marilyn Manson backmasked his own revelation in the song “Revelation #9” on the B-side for the single “Get Your Gunn.” The revelation was a little more haunting than The Beatles’ own, with someone declaring: “You are on the other side now...there ain't no going back once you been here, brothers and sisters...there ain't no going back.” 8. Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin This list would be remiss not to mention Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” As with many on this list, the song was targeted by Christian fundamentalists who claimed that backmasking had hidden secret messages. Paul Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network appeared in a TV program on January 1982. In the program, he alleged that midway through “Stairway to Heaven,” a hidden message says, “Here’s to my sweet Satan” and “I sing because I live with Satan.” This is the reverse of the track during the phrase “If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now...” This is when things got a little crazy in the government sphere with backmasking, as some legislators tried to impose a warning label on those records that purportedly contained it. In fact, it went so far as the Consumer Protection and Toxic Materials Committee of the California State Assembly in April of 1982. It was then that a hearing on backmasking was held, in which “Stairway to Heaven” was one of the prime examples of these evil subliminal messages being forced upon listeners. The hearing called in William Yarroll, who called himself a “neuroscientific researcher,” and declared that the brain could, in fact, decode backmasking – meaning, the subliminal messages really could get through, even if spoken backwards. This is all from a self-proclaimed researcher, mind you. Led Zeppelin has largely ignored the crazy claims, although the band’s audio engineer said the claims were “totally and utterly ridiculous,” while the band’s recording company, Swan Song Records, said in a statement: “Our turntables only play in one direction—forwards.” 7. This Land Is Your Land – Woody Guthrie The song seems like a patriotic uplifting chorus of America-love…but if you know the hidden message behind it, you’ll understand it’s more like a jab at the injustices that can be found in “this land.” In reality, Guthrie was a communist sympathizer, so when he wrote, “This land is your land, this land is my land,” he meant just that. The focal point of the song wasn’t so much the idea that America should share its land with immigrants, the country being the melting pot that it is; it was that the public ownership of property might not be such a bad thing. In fact, Guthrie wrote “This Land” in response to the ultra patriotic and sentimental tune of the time, “God Bless America.” He believed that “God Bless” didn’t represent “the people” – i.e. the working-class citizens of the United States. He looked at it as basic propaganda. In fact, one of his lyrics that didn’t make the final cut of the song but was found amongst his work reads as follows: “One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple, by the relief office I saw my people. As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if God blessed America for me.” Guthrie wrote the simple melody in 1945, two years before U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy invigorated the Second Red Scare, a time during which a campaign against Communism and political repression was at its height. Everyone was afraid of the Soviets, and McCarthy was at the forefront of this fear. 6. Louie Louie – The Kingsmen Now, there are songs that cause controversy and then there are songs that require our government to investigate the secret messages behind them. The song “Louie Louie” was one of the latter; it was so controversial that it underwent FBI investigation for two whole years. Listen to “Louie Louie” and you’d probably agree that the song lyrics are muddled and confusing. Incomprehensible, really. So it probably won’t come as a surprise that theorists began to surmise that the lyrics were obscene. This led to the FBI investigation of the song, because at the time, it was the Bureau’s job to censor obscenities. So, when they received a letter from Sarasota High School, suggesting that the lyrics were “so filthy that I can-not enclose them in this letter,” the Bureau had to open a case file on the song. “We all know there is obscene materials available for those who seek it,” the letter read, “but when they start sneaking in this material in the guise of the latest teen age rock & roll hit record these morons have gone too far.” The case file did include what the complainant heard in the lyrics, but we won’t go into that here. The official lyrics are pretty tame, with a young woman waiting for her lover as he crosses the sea. The man doesn’t think he’ll make it back home, and he’s thinking about the girl all the time. At the end of the song, the man hopes to see his love and swears he’ll never leave her again. Listening to the garbled song, you might not hear these official lyrics as sung. In fact, the FBI literally analyzed “Louie Louie” for those two years, playing the song at various speeds, trying to catch the supposed “obscene” secret message. The investigation didn’t go so far as to contact the songwriter, himself, Jack Ely, and they were not able to determine whether the so-called secret message in the lyrics was obscene or not. So, nothing ever came of it. This just goes to show that some people may be hearing secret messages that don’t even exist. 5. Michael – Franz Ferdinand You might know Franz Ferdinand, the Scottish indie rock band, from such early 2000 hits as “Take Me Out” and “No You Girls.” But it was on their bromantic song, “Michael,” that a secret message was backmasked in. “She’s worried about you, call your mother.” If for some reason you were thinking about your mother and then decided to play “Michael” backwards, a creeped out sensation might be sent up your spine. But, if you never thought to play the record backwards, then you probably just jammed out, not thinking about your mother. The message was put there in reference to Bob Hardy, the band’s bassist, who was always fretting over calling his mom while touring. I’m sure this secret message in “Michael” serves as a reminder to him to phone home. Better than tying a bass string around your finger. 4. Empty Spaces – Pink Floyd Pink Floyd had fun with hidden messages in their track, “Empty Spaces.” Their hidden message was placed right before the lyrical section of the song on the left channel. Played forward, it’s mumbo jumbo. Played backward, you hear the greeting, “Hello, looker,” followed by: “You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont...” Then someone shouts at “Roger” – Roger Waters, the band’s bassist, we assume – to inform him that Carolyne’s calling (Carolyne being the real name of Waters’ then wife). That wraps up the secret message. Some consider the “Old Pink” in question might be a nickname for Syd, Pink Floyd’s lead guitarist. The message seems to imply that Old Pink went insane and now lives at a psyche ward in Chalfont. While many listeners may have gotten the joke, others likely sent fan mail to this mystery address, proving that they, too, might end up at the “Funny Farm” some day. 3. Judas’ Kiss – Petra Some bands had a little fun with backmasking. Petra, for instance, must have thought it was pretty funny that some of these Christian fundamentalist groups were getting all up-in-arms about secret messages hidden in songs. The evil rock musicians were allegedly trying to make their listeners do bad things through backmasking and other subliminal messages, according to the fundamentalists. So Petra decided to speak directly to them in a somewhat creepy way. It was in “Judas’ Kiss” on the album More Power To Ya that the band poked fun at the accusations. The song’s intro involved speech that was obviously reversed, suggesting that there was a secret message hidden in backmasking. When the fundamentalist groups dug into it, they heard the following direct message: “What’re ya lookin’ for the Devil for, when ya oughta be lookin’ for the Lord?” The band suddenly turned these fundamentalist groups on their heads by calling them out on the allegedly embedded subliminal messages that the groups were looking for in rock music. The band was probably hoping the fundamentalists might think again before trying to pick apart songs to find something that wasn’t there and, instead, focus on what they claimed was important to them – “the Lord.” But, judging by the rest of this list, I doubt that happened. 2. Third Stone from the Sun – Jimi Hendrix One might expect a song called “Third Stone from the Sun” to be about earthly things. But some believe that Jimi Hendrix had alien communication in mind when he wrote this tune for the rock/jazz instrumental album, Are You Experienced. “Third Stone” is the trippiest track on the record, and if you play the vinyl at 45 rpm, you will be privy to an alien conversation. The pair of aliens are chitchatting as they close in on Earth, one in the “star fleet,” the other in the “scout ship.” The scout ship gives its position, which is nearing earth. According to the scout ship, Earth likely has some “intelligent species” on it. When he goes to investigate, he reports his findings: “Strange beautiful grass of green, with your majestic silver seas, your mysterious mountains I wish to see closer.” He asks to land his “kinky machine” on Earth. The conversation ends on a creepy note, as the alien says, “Although your world wonders me, with your majestic and superior cackling hen, your people I do not understand, so to you I shall put an end, and you'll never hear surf music again.” What a sad end that would be. Before we get to number 1, my name is Chills and I hope you’re enjoying my narration. If you’re curious about what I look like in real life, then go to my instagram, @dylan_is_chillin_yt and tap that follow button to find out. I’m currently doing a super poll on my Instagram, if you believe ghosts are real, then go to my most recent photo, and tap the like button. If you don’t, DM me saying why. When you’re done come right back to this video to find out the number 1 entry. Also follow me on Twitter @YT_Chills because that’s where I post video updates. It's a proven fact that generosity makes you a happier person, so if you're generous enough to hit that subscribe button and the bell beside it then thank you. This way you'll be notified of the new videos we upload every Tuesday and Saturday. 1.Eldorado – Electric Light Orchestra Coming out of the 60s and 70s, many rock bands were backmasking or being accused of backmasking. Backmasking involves hiding secret messages in music that can only be heard when played backwards. The Electric Light Orchestra was one of these accused bands. When the album, Eldorado, debuted in 1974, a number of Christian fundamentalist groups quickly jumped on the bandwagon, declaring the band were Satan worshipers. Where did they get such nonsense? From a line in the title track which they claim says “He is the nasty one – Christ you’re infernal” when played in reverse. While Electric Light Orchestra said that Eldorado had no such subliminal messaging in its composition, they taunted their fundamentalist critics by putting plenty of it in their next album, “Fire on High.” In fact, the very first line is the backmasked message, “The music is reversible but time is not. Turn back. Turn back. Turn back. Turn back.” And if you didn’t turn back but continued on to their 1983 album, “Secret Messages,” you’d hear a number of subliminal messages; the album is an Easter Egg Hunt. In fact, the album is so full of secrets that the British version contains the warning, “Warning: Contains Secret Backward Messages.” Even the record jacket’s back cover reveals some “secret messages” in the form of anagrams of the band members’ names, along with the initials of the band – ELO – in Morse Code. If you’re hanging on every backmasked word of the album, you’ll hear the band very politely tell its listeners in the final track, “Thank you for listening.”

Channel: Top15s

Views: 3,224,142

Rating: 4.6253352 out of 5

Keywords: top15s, top 15s, top 15, top 10, top 5, chills, chills narrator, top, 15, list, countdown, secret, messages, secret messages, hidden messages, songs, music, famous songs, popular songs, song, mysterious, unsolved, unexplained, creepy, mystery, found online, analysis, unsolved mysteries, hidden messages backwards, music video, Katy Perry, Foster the People, The Beatles, Beyonce, Marilyn Manson, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, scary, radio

Id: jYngIIib9vo

Length: 28min 6sec (1686 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 30 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/BrokenGlassSparkling]

The popular Single Ladies video, one of the best music videos of all time, at least according to Kanye West, is absolutely full of satanic choreography.

Just bask in this glorious sentence.

[u/PeachPlumParity]

Side to Side is about riding a dick so hard you have to walk sideways I could not BELIEVE it.

[u/quaerex]

I tried watching this video but the guy's voice was impossible to listen to. It's like he didn't emote

[u/[deleted]]

Number 9 Will Shock You! You Won't Believe What She Saw!

[u/[deleted]]

Illuminati exposed.

[u/RimeTM]

-Numbered List -Topic of video is popular content with an element especially popular on the internet on the thumbnail -Red circle highlighting something on thumbnail

Gosh, this doesn’t feel clickbaity in the slightest. /s