It’s taken 15 years but Missy Elliot mumbles in Work It is finally decoded [VIDEO]
The single was released in 2002 and since then people have just sung the gibberish bit exactly as it sounds. Although for others it had been pretty bleeding obvious from the beginning.The line following, “I put my thing down flip it and reverse it,” one of the trickiest portions of a song to navigate in the entire art of karaoke, is not “Fner nyer finipippy pal myap” but “I put my thing down flip it and reverse it,” reversed.
Realizing that Elliott isn’t spitting gibberish must be one of the last examples of lyric-related pleasure to be had in the digital age, which has – through a combination of readily available audio technology and extreme nerdiness – largely ruined the misheard lyric. Through resources such as the Genius hive mind or the argumentative comments of songmeanings.com, almost every song has been dissected ad infinitum. The days of disappointment that an album didn’t come with a lyric sheet, and subsequent repeated plays to try to figure out exactly what Kurt Cobain is screaming during In Utero’s Tourette’s, for example, are long gone.
Being able to digitally reverse audio has also dampened the once-popular mystery of the backwards lyric. During the 60s, the Beatles utilized the technique of “backmasking”. On Rain, the B-side to Paperback Writer, John Lennon sings what sounds like gibberish during the fade out. He claimed it was a result of him turning up stoned and being “transfixed” by accidentally playing the rough mix in reverse. A deep dive into the infamous Beatles conspiracy theories suggests that there are subliminal messages to be uncovered when playing certain songs backwards supporting the theory that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by an imposter.
In 1982, Paul Crouch, a TV evangelist, claimed that Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven was hiding a sinister message within – “here’s to my sweet Satan”, which only emerged when the track was reversed. The band denied it, but almost every group to appear on a petrol-station CD your dad might have bought once has been accused of similar devil worship, from Queen to Rush to Pink Floyd. These days, though, if you hear the garbled zip of a backwards lyric, it is most likely to be a censored swearword on the radio, rather than a sly attempt to drag your children to the underworld.The single was released in 2002 and since then people have just sung the gibberish bit exactly as it sounds.
Even Honey G sang it exactly like that when she performed it on X Factor. But, the real words were right under our noses all along.
In the bit preceding the mumbled line, she says: ‘Is it worth it, let me work it I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it.’
And the next bit?
It’s that in reverse – ‘Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gniht ym tup I.’
Yep,they’ve had a go at playing that line ‘backwards’ so that it actually plays forwards and they can confirm she is genuinely saying ‘I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it’ in reverse.
Whoa.
But given the nature of the song, and the fact she sings about reversing it all the way through, there is many a fan face-palming right now that it’s taken 15 whole years to decode it.
That’s right, it’s not gibberish. Although for others it had been pretty obvious from the beginning.
Wow! It really took y'all this long to figure out what Missy Elliott was saying?! pic.twitter.com/FJ7QCQvYfa— Lady Gaga (@chiIdofgaga) March 24, 2017
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