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Backward Masking
Backward masking refers to the insertion of
subliminal messages into a piece of music by
recording it “backwards” onto the soundtrack. A
message so recorded can be detected and thereby
“unmasked” by playing the song in reverse.
According to some conservative Christians, rock
music companies routinely incorporate Satanic
messages into their albums for the purpose of
leading innocent young people into the service of
the Prince of Darkness via the commission of
antisocial acts.
Some experimental musicians had utilized
reversed recording at least as far back as the 1960s,
but for the innocuous purpose of creating weird
sounds rather than for the purpose of broadcasting
secret messages. Christians who disliked rock
music had originally denounced the genre as
Satanic due to the unconscious influence of what
was described as its “Druid beat.” This critique
shifted to denouncing the influence of backward
masked messages during the early 1980s. The first
book-length exposé was Jacob Aranza’s 1983
Backward Masking Unmasked.
In the same year that Aranza’s book was
published, the band Mötley Crüe responded to
what was already a popular craze by jokingly
inscribing their Shout at the Devil album: “this
record may contain backward masking.” However,
efforts to parody and ridicule the notion were
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quickly outdone by the proponents of backward
masking themselves. Thus in 1986, for example, an
Ohio evangelist led some seventy-five youngsters
in the mass immolation of albums containing the
theme song from the old television show Mr. Ed.
(Certain fundamentalists believe that talking
animals are diabolical.) This particular minister
asserted that when “A Horse is a Horse” is played
in reverse, one can clearly hear the message,
“Someone sung this song for Satan.” The silliness
of this exegetical approach was also evident in the
pronouncements of certain writers who claimed
to find infernal backward masking in country and
western music.
There are several obvious problems with this
point of view. In the first place, it assumes the existence
of a diabolical conspiracy that is implausible
to almost everyone outside the conservative
Christian subculture. In the second place, even if
such mischief was actually taking place in Satanic
recording studios, psychological studies have
demonstrated that such messages—infernal or
otherwise—have absolutely no influence on
listeners’ behaviors. This second point was highlighted
by several court cases involving accusations
of backward masking.
Beginning in the 1980s, a series of different
lawsuits that proposed to sue various heavy metal
groups and their recording studios for the supposedly
baneful effects of their music were thrown