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The history of speaking backwards
Reversing language is old. It started with written word games, became a secret code for street traders and thieves, turned into a studio effect, caused a moral panic, and ended up as a phone challenge. Here is the whole story in order.
Timeline
- Before AD 62
The Sator Square in Pompeii
The oldest known copy of the Latin word square ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR was scratched into a wall near Pompeii's amphitheatre before the earthquake of AD 62. It reads the same forwards, backwards, up and down.
- Middle Ages onward
The devil's paternoster
European folklore held that reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards could call up the Devil. Reversal became linked with magic and mischief for centuries.
- 1800s
Verlan among French thieves
The earliest documented verlan, French slang that swaps syllables, comes from 19th century robbers who wanted to talk without being understood.
- 1851
Back slang in print
Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor recorded the back slang of London's costermongers, street traders who said words spelt backwards to talk behind customers' backs.
- 1913
Crowley's backwards training
Occultist Aleister Crowley's Magick (Book 4) advised students to train themselves to think backwards, including by listening to records played in reverse.
- 1935
Reversed film
Gold Diggers of 1935 ran a dance number and its music in reverse, one of the earliest uses of reversed sound on screen.
- 1954
Llareggub
Dylan Thomas named the town in Under Milk Wood Llareggub. Read backwards it is a joke on the BBC censors.
- 1959
The first backmasked hit
The Eligibles' "Car Trouble" reached number 107 on the Billboard charts and is believed to be the first hit with reversed passages.
- 1966
The Beatles' "Rain"
John Lennon played a tape backwards at home and loved the sound. George Martin reversed part of his vocal for the coda of "Rain", the first backwards vocal on a major pop single.
- 1969
"Paul is dead"
A caller to Detroit DJ Russ Gibb claimed "Revolution 9" played backwards proved Paul McCartney had died. Fans started spinning records backwards to hunt for clues.
- 1981 to 1983
The satanic panic
Preachers claimed rock records hid satanic messages. "Stairway to Heaven" was played backwards at a California hearing, Arkansas passed a warning-label bill that was vetoed, and a federal bill never passed.
- 1983
Bands answer back
Electric Light Orchestra, accused over Eldorado, released an album called Secret Messages. Styx put a mock warning sticker on Kilroy Was Here.
- 1984
Amadeus
In the film Amadeus, Mozart and Constanze play a game of saying phrases backwards and guessing them.
- 1985
Science tests backmasking
Psychologists Vokey and Read at the University of Lethbridge found no effect of backwards messages on what listeners did.
- 1988
Backwards records and games
Steve Briers says he recited Queen's A Night at the Opera backwards on BBC Radio 1. David Fuhrer's board game Backwords came out with Random House.
- 19 April 1990
The Red Room
Twin Peaks aired its Red Room dream. The actors said their lines phonetically backwards and the footage was reversed, giving the scene its famous wrong-sounding speech.
- 1990
Judas Priest in court
Two families sued Judas Priest over alleged hidden messages. The judge dismissed the case, finding the science did not support the claim.
- 2001
Radiohead sings backwards
Thom Yorke sang "Like Spinning Plates" backwards and the recording was reversed.
- 2007
Backwards Dave
David Klempfner beat David Fuhrer, "Mr Backwards", in a live backwards-speaking contest on Australia's Triple J.
- 2016
A backwards-speaking family
Scientists studied a Serbian father and daughter who could speak backwards at will and linked the trait to unusual working memory.
- 2019
The reverse challenge
TikTok users started posting videos in reverse under #reversechallenge, the start of the reverse trend that led to the reverse singing challenge.
- 2020
Brain scans of backwards talkers
Researchers in Argentina and Spain scanned fluent backwards speakers and found differences in the brain's speech-sound pathway.
- 2023
An Ig Nobel Prize
That study won the Ig Nobel Prize for Communication, "for studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward".
- 2024
A Guinness World Record
Reem Al Karim spoke 27 words in reverse in 30 seconds in Dubai on 13 November 2024.
Why the idea keeps coming back
Backwards speech sits right between language and noise. Your brain tries hard to find words in it, which is why people hear "messages" in reversed records and why a good reverse video is so funny: the first half is gibberish, the second half is suddenly perfect. Today the same trick is a game anyone can play with a phone.
Questions
Who invented speaking backwards?
Nobody. Reversed words appear in Roman word squares, Victorian back slang and French verlan long before recordings. The Beatles popularised reversed vocals in 1966.
When did backmasking start?
Reversed sound was used in film by 1935. The first hit record with backmasking is believed to be "Car Trouble" by The Eligibles in 1959, and the Beatles made it famous with "Rain" in 1966.
Where did the reverse singing challenge come from?
It grew out of the reverse video trend on TikTok that started in 2019. People sing a line, reverse it, learn the backwards version and film it so it plays forwards.
Try it with Revocal
Revocal reverses any line, plays it back slowed down until you can copy it, then films one take and plays you back forwards. Free on iPhone and Android.
