NEW BACKWARD TAPE MASKING EXPOSED
britney spears wants to have sex with you

Ah! "Backward tape masking!" Boy, that phrase sure brings back memories. Back when I was in high school during the early and mid 1980s, it seemed like an endless number of travelling evangelists were making a killing touring the Bible Belt and preaching against the evils they had supposedly found embedded in famous rock songs. But "what is 'backward tape masking?'" you may ask.

From Wikipedia:

A backward message (otherwise, but incorrectly, known as Backmasking) is a supposed message hidden in an audio recording that is revealed by playing it backwards. Thus it requires audio equipment with this facility, either built-in, or in the case of a gramophone record, by turning it backward by hand.

Critics of rock and roll songs have occasionally claimed that rock musicians have recorded backward messages about sex, drugs, death, and blasphemy into their songs, in order to disseminate a message to dedicated fans that might not otherwise be transmittable. It is further occasionally claimed that these messages can be perceived subconsciously, simply by listening to the audio played normally. From this speculation, it is further suggested that audio can contain subliminal commands that incite their listeners to commit acts of violence, or simply drive them to irrational behavior. The general population (especially among fans of rock-and-roll music) usually scoffs at the idea that hidden commands are recorded in rock music, and this idea has become an urban legend.

However

It is worth noting that, given a randomly generated series of syllables spoken in a variety of accents, a two-syllable pair that can be liberally interpreted as "Satan" is very easy to generate. Therefore, any individual with a small amount of creative interpretation skills could play virtually any song with vocals backwards and uncover "Satanic messages". This fact has been exploited by defense attorneys in "backwards messaging" court cases, who often disprove allegations by "uncovering Satanic messages" in songs by Christian artists, most famously Amy Grant.

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In other words, backward tape masking is, by and large, a bunch of bullshit. I remember one particular anti-rock evangelist who spoke to our Southern Baptist youth group back in the day really had his sideshow routine down to a T. He told us that he was going to play Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" backward, but he first wanted us to know what we were looking for, so he wrote down the Satanic backward lyrics for us to peruse on a chalk board. He spoke them aloud and told us to listen carefully, then he played the tape. "Did you catch that?" he asked. "Here, I'll play it again." And so it went a few more times. After the third time or so, several of my youth group buddies were convinced that the gibberish we heard was, in fact, a resoundingly clear ode to Satan.

Obviously, the anti-rock evangelist had managed to fool my fellow teenagers by leading them to a pretty absurd conclusion--presenting the Satanic message before playing the tape essentially prejudiced most of the group toward believing his outrageous assertion. To this day, "Stairway to Heaven" played backward sounds to me like a bunch of nonsense syllables.

Listen for yourself (click on "Stairway to Heaven" at the top of the page).

Anyway, having said all that, I must admit that I'm quite impressed with this latest backward lyric scandal. This sample is much more clear than the above mentioned Led Zeppelin example. It may very well be the real thing. But how did she pull it off? I mean, it's Britney Spears, for god's sake! It's not like she's Roger Waters or John Lennon or anything coming even close to a pop music intellectual. What's going on?

From BadMouth:

The combination of baby-toned voice, little-girl innocence and fetish-inducing Catholic schoolgirl outfits was guaranteed to make her a huge star among middle-aged Japanese businessmen--but suprisingly it made her a star among horny tone-deaf men in America, as well.

But the bigger suprise was that prepubecent girls found a new, talent-free role model to emulate. The popularity of low-rise jeans, low-cut tops and low-quality pop music can all be traced back to Spears--as well as any number of eating disorders.

But when asked about her pubescent sexuality, Britney's message was always straightforward: no sex until marraige. But what was the queen of the prick-tease really saying to her fans? You're about to find out.

Let's listen to a three-second clip from her first hit, "Hit Me Baby One More Time" two different ways.

Apparently, the lyric "...with you I lose my mind, give me a si-" when played backward becomes "...sleep with me I'm not too young." It sounds pretty real to me.

Listen for yourself.

Weird, huh? God, I hope it doesn't subconsciously force me to change my behavior somehow. I'm already feeling an urge to bare my midriff.

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