Skip to main content

A lot goes into making an album, but some fans believe bands do even more work than is apparent by slipping hidden messages into their songs. Some of these supposed secret transmissions from musicians are nefarious or conspiratorial, while others are relatively benign. Regardless, here are three bands that some believe placed hidden messages in their songs.

A black and white picture of Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, and Brian May of Queen performing in concert.
Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, and Brian May | Express Newspapers/Getty Images

The Beatles

John Lennon sparked conspiracy theories when he admitted to placing a backward message in a song.

“On the end of ‘Rain’ you hear me singing it backwards,” he told Rolling Stone in 1968. “We’d done the main thing at EMI and the habit was then to take the songs home and see what you thought a little extra gimmick or what the guitar piece would be.”

From there, fans began poring over the band’s lyrics in search of other hidden messages. A caller to a radio station said that you could hear “Turn me on, dead man,” in “Revolution 9.” Fans believed it was a hint that Paul McCartney had died and the band replaced him with a body double. McCartney admitted that they knew about all this and even included backward lyrics as a way to confuse listeners.

“We even put one of those spoof backwards recordings on the end of the single for a laugh, to give all those Beatles nuts something to do,” he told The Guardian. “I think it was a line of a George Formby song.”

Led Zeppelin

“Stairway to Heaven,” one of Led Zeppelin’s most well-known songs, may reference heaven, but some thought it included satanic messages. Per Rolling Stone, televangelist Paul Crouch claimed the song included the hidden message: “Here’s to my sweet Satan/The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan/He will give those with him 666/There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.”

Robert Plant found these accusations frustrating.

“To me it’s very sad, because ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was written with every best intention, and as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end, that’s not my idea of making music,” he told Musician Magazine in 1983. 

He also wondered if there was actually anyone out there who would put so much effort into hiding messages in music.

“Who on Earth would have ever thought of doing that?” he said. “You’ve got to have a lot of time on your hands to even consider that people would do that.”

Queen

The classic Queen song “Another One Bites the Dust” fell under scrutiny, with some listeners convinced that the band was using a hidden message to encourage recreational drug use.

“The music group Queen has a message for you,” Christian radio host Michael Mills said, per Radio X. “In their album A Night At The Opera, they sing ‘Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me.’ In their hit ‘Another One Bites The Dust,’ their hidden message – in reverse – is ‘Some of us smoke marijuana.'”

Compared to the satanic and conspiratorial messages other bands are accused of, the latter message here feels pretty tame.

Best in Entertainment