10 Weird Backwards Messages In Rock Songs

Back when the '90s was spawning new genres for rock and roll left and right, we still didn't really know where to place Beck. Having the same kind of slacker mentality that the rest of grunge had, he felt more like the Talking Heads for Generation X, concerned more with art rock than what everyone else was doing at the time. And as much as Loser may have been hard to understand at first, things got even weirder when we played it backwards.

Outside of the singalong rap verses, the entire chorus almost sounds intelligible, until you realize that it's basically Beck saying the phrase "I'm a loser" in Spanish. That's not where it gets weird though. In between the samples of people talking in the bridge, you also hear this marbled mouthed sound of Beck singing, which is actually the entire chorus being played in reverse.

This wasn't even the last time that the slacker generation would try something like this. Not even 5 years later, we had the Butthole Surfers reaching the top of the charts with the song Pepper, where they basically did the exact same thing by playing the chorus backwards on the bridge. Granted, if you're trying to put every single weird element into your song, you'd better make sure the weirdness can be heard both backwards and forwards at the exact same time.