Phonetic Reversal - Examples

Examples

  • In 1982, John Wright of NoMeansNo sang phonetically reversed lyrics on the backing vocal to the "Rich Guns" track on the band's first album, Mama.
  • In the 1984 American film Amadeus, lead character Wolfgang Mozart claims to Constanze Weber that " everything goes backwards." He then proceeds to deliver a series of phonetically reversed phrases, many of them vulgar, which she must guess by reversing them out loud.
  • In the television drama Twin Peaks, the Man from Another Place's character's speech was phonetically reversed. The Simpsons then used the technique to parody that Twin Peaks episode in "Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)".
  • Singer-Songwriter-Multi-instrumentalist Jim Ure is better known by his phonetically reversed name Midge Ure.
  • Kate Bush used phonetic reversal in her songs "Watching You Without Me" (1985) and "Leave it Open" (1982).
  • On the song by Radiohead "Like Spinning Plates", Thom Yorke actually sings the first verse voiced and sounded out backwards, and then the final cut of the album studio version has that superimposed back-masked as the first verse of the song so it would be cognizant as being sung forward to the listener, albeit with unnatural intonation and inflection apparent in his voice.
  • A specific recording of the phrase "In the mix" exists that is a phonetic palindrome, and is often used by Turntablist DJs for this reason.
  • In the 2008 monster film Cloverfield, after the credits, a broken sound recording can be heard of Rob saying "...help us...", as at the end, him and his girlfriend were trapped under a bridge. If reversed, it sounds like Rob saying "...its still alive..."
  • In 2007, backwards speaking radio sensation "Backwards Dave" (David Klempfner) beat the Guinness World Record Holder, David Fuhrer aka "Mr Backwards" in a backwards speaking competition live on Triple J. In 2008, Dave performed on Australia's Got Talent saying "Does Australia Have Talent?" in phonetic reversal. In 2012 Backwards Dave appeared on Channel 7's "Sunrise", an Australian TV show.
  • During the opening theme song for Gravity Falls, a whisper is heard saying" I'm still here" is heard. However, if you reverse it, it says" Three Letters Back". That is a clue to the ending credits code.The whisper is changed to" Switch the A with Z"in double dipper.

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