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"Wake-up Wake-up It's Christmas" In September of 2000 my wife and I wrote the lyrics and music to this song. We then had it professionally recorded. We didn't do much to promote the song, we just played it for friends and family for a couple of Holiday seasons. In July of 2004 I was listening to a nationally recognized after hours AM Radio Program and the host mentioned the "Backmasking" of some notorious heavy metal songs. I snickered at my memories about all the hoopla that ensued at the time those reverse lyrics were brought to the publics attention years ago. The next day I was doing some research on the internet about the whole concept of "Backmasking" in the music industry and also about the subject as it pertains to various University Studies that analyzed the natural occurrence and predictability of what words sound like when spoken in reverse. I was quite amused and intrigued about the subject and just for giggles I popped a CD of "Wake-up Wake-up it's Christmas" into my laptop. Then I recorded a segment of the song onto Windows Sound Recorder which was the only computer program I had on my laptop that let me modify the playback of audio files. Goofing around with this audio clip I hit the reverse command on the program menu and the song started playing backwards. It was just a matter of seconds after the song started playing backwards when I noticed that it contained some very discernable backwards words. It was very spooky to say the least and I thought for sure I was just imagining things. The more I listened to it the clearer it became that I was not imagining things but the sounds were really real words! I didn't want to freak my wife out (even though she is very open minded) so I didn't say anything to her about it for a couple of hours. In the mean time I copied the entire song to the computer program and listened to it in reverse some more. I was absolutely in shock about how many words and sentences I was hearing in reverse, absolutely amazed! For the next couple of months I tried to decipher exactly what was in the backward lyrics and did it mean anything. A lot of the words were plain as day to me. However some of the sounds, even though they sounded like real words, were not recognizable to me. Therefore I looked in encyclopedias and dictionaries for answers, I even looked in the Bible since some of the sentences sort of sounded like psalms to me. There are still some words that I can't interpret since my vocabulary is limited and surely not culturally diverse. I have the feeling that some of the words are Hebrew, Arabic, or Latin in nature. The links to the left of the page will take you to sound bytes of the song in reverse, 1/2 speed reverse, double speed reverse, and forward. You'll also see my interpretation of the sounds. Listen to the clips and try to decipher the sounds for yourself, you may even be able to decipher better than I what the words are and if there is a message in the song or just random words. Explore, Enjoy! Cordially, James G Barrett
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