10 Legendary Rock Songs That Were Insanely Controversial

For as long as rock and roll has existed, there have been concerned parents that were convinced that something demonic was going on. There was something primal in the music of people like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, and it was the work of the devil that caused fans to go absolutely wild whenever they heard this music. And since there was nothing explicit about it said in any of the lyrics, it was only a matter of time before someone tried to play the whole thing backwards.

Despite the constant cliches that come with a song like Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin's masterpiece was actually under a lot of scrutiny in its time for allegedly containing Satanic messages. Since Jimmy Page had already expressed a fascination with the occult, parents were desperate to find something and claimed to hear a hidden message in the verses of Stairway, which allegedly had Robert Plant singing about the wonders of what Satan has to offer him. While the song played backwards is completely gibberish, that didn't stop parents from trying either, with the next few years giving them a field day to look for backwards messages in every single song that came out.

Then again, if these people were of the ultra religious stripe and insisted on there being Satanic messages, wouldn't singling out a song like Stairway be counterproductive? This entire song is about a lady who is trying to buy a stairway to paradise, so wouldn't the backwards version of that be Hell anyway?