Another One Bites The Dust

Originally Posted On: DATE: 09/18/2005 10:59:45

When I was in high school in the early eighties, a friend of mine (David Jackson) told me that there were hidden lyrics in a song by the rock group Queen. I didn't believe him, so he put my copy of the LP (we had vinyl LP records then) on my record player, and turned the record backwards by hand. On the song "Another One Bites The Dust", there were some very interesting lyrics. Take a listen to both versions and see if you can hear what I thought I heard in the backwards version. (Note that before you listen to any of this that this song is (c) Queen, and I have no rights to it whatsoever. I'm just making an interesting observation about a 5 second snippet of it.)

• Here's the snippet I'm talking about played normally.
  
• Here's the exact same snippet played backwards.
  

To me, it sounds like the backwards version says "it's fun to smoke marijuana" several times. Now that you think I heard that when I listened to it, listen to the backwards version again. Did the things I heard affect what you heard? There are a couple of interesting thoughts here:

• If it really says that, how did the guys in the band manage to make it say that?
• If it doesn't, how much does your expectation that something will say something affect what you actually hear?
  

Personally I can imagine a bunch of guys messing around with audio equipment, trying to find something to write a song about and finding out that "i like to smoke marijuana" sounds like "another one bites the dust" backwards, and using that in a song.

In the end, it doesn't really matter. I seriously doubt that there's any subconscious decoding that will take lyrics backwards, and put them in your memory, and further, I still think that the song is a fun song.