GreenDay.Org
06/23/2009 21st Century Breakdown Easter Eggs
By eliu

What's the common point between Green Day's East Jesus Nowhere, the Revolver album from The Beatles, and even Britney Spears' Baby One More Time? They all contain hidden backmasked messages! Backmasking is a recording technique in which a sound is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward.

This technique was first used in 1966 by The Beatles on their album Revolver. Other notable examples include Led Zeppelin whose Stairway to Heaven if played backward seems to talk about Satan, Queen, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, and The Rolling Stones. Green Day was missing on this list, but today we can add it!

Audio waveform of Green Day's "East Jesus Nowhere"

I've discovered that if you reverse the intro of East Jesus Nowhere (at 0:24, see screen shot above) and listen carefully, you can hear two different sentences with different volume on the right and on the left channel. Both messages are present on each channel, but the volume of the first message is raised on the left, and vice-versa for the second message. The left channel goes "Don't test me" while the right channel goes "Second guess me". Those two lines are indeed part of the lyrics that come later in the song.

There are other bits reversed throughout 21st Century Breakdown just to obtain an effect. It seems Green Day plays and experiments a lot with sound on this album! Is there other backmasked messages on 21st Century Breakdown, or Green Day's previous albums? Let the chase begin!

Download the reversed audio:
Left channel, "Don't test me" (WAV format, 2 sec, 110 KB)
Right channel, "Second guess me" (WAV format, 2 sec, 110 KB)

<<< Back to main page… | Contact