The Microphone Was Upside
Down
Lyrics
About
The Microphone Was Upside Down is a
backwards song about backmasking. It highlights three of the
most prominent songs in the great debate about songs thought to contain
backmasking: "Stairway To Heaven" by Led Zeppelin,
"Revolution 9" by The Beatles, and "Another One Bites The Dust" by
Queen. I also reference the "Paul Is Dead" idea in the verse
about the Beatles.
The last line of the song, "Or were they
worshipping there's?" is there because when you turn "there's" around
backwards it sounds like "Satan" (that's where the Stairway To Heaven
controversy came from; lots of lines in the song contain the lyric
"there's"). The lyric line is obviously supposed to be "Or
were they worshipping Satan?" but the "Satan" is backwards when you
listen to it forwards and the rest of the line is backwards when you
listen to it backwards.
Personally, I believe most songs only
accidentally contain backmasked messages. Stairway To Heaven
was possibly an accident (I know people cite the "Sometimes words have
two meanings" line as evidence, but I think that's just continuing the
story in the song), Revolution 9 was definitely purposefully
backmasked, and Another One Bites The Dust is hilarious but I believe
it was accidental. I know there are some Zappa songs and some
White Stripes songs and some Weird Al songs (along with many more, I'm
sure) that have intentional backmasking in them, but for the most part
the "Satanic" backmasked songs are mostly accidents.
I've actually recorded three entirely different versions of this song.
The first had crappy chords and crappy lyrics (the lyric were
about a completely different topic), the second version had the current
lyrics but maintained the same crappy chords, and this new version has
completely revised lyrics and music. It's mostly based on a
blues
scale in the key of C, but I throw a natural seventh and a second and I
think some major thirds in there occasionally. It doesn't
sound
so much bluesy but like some poseur hard-rock song. I think
it's
cause I overused minor thirds. It's still a pretty cool song,
though, and it sounds kind of creepy when turned around backwards.
