Hidden vs. Subliminal

Today, I got a chuckle out of Kyle Anderson’s MTV Newsroom article about “subliminal” messages in records and on album covers. Anderson doesn’t quite understand the definition of a subliminal message.

A subliminal message is a signal or message embedded in another medium, designed to pass below the normal limits of the human mind’s perception. These messages are unrecognizable by the conscious mind, but in certain situations can affect the subconscious mind and can negatively or positively influence subsequent later thoughts, behaviors, actions, attitudes, belief systems and value systems.

Anderson wrote an entertaining article about backmasking and hidden mesages on album covers. However, none of the examples he gave are really subliminal messages. I don’t believe there are any authenticated examples of subliminal messages being used on album covers or in popular music.

Here’s what Anderson wrote about a U2 album cover:

U2, All That You Can’t Leave Behind album cover
The cover of U2’s 2000 comeback album depicts the band in a terminal at Charles De Gaulle International Airport in Paris. In the background there is a digital sign that reads “J33-3,” which is code for a passage from the Bible (Jeremiah Chapter 33, Verse 3). The passage reads, “Call to me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” Bono has always worn his Christianity on his sleeve, so this is an especially subtle move for them.

Here is the U2 cover with the “subliminal” message in plain sight:

Placing a chapter and verse from the Bible on an album cover is interesting. However, it is not subliminal. Remember the guy with the rainbow wig who used to hold up a sign with a Bible chapter and verse at sports events? That was hardly “below the normal limits of the human mind’s perception”!

In order for the message to be subliminal, it has to be something that we can’t consciously perceive. The example I recall from high school Psychology class was hiding the image of a skull in an ice cube that appeared in a print ad. Flashing the word “thirsty” on a movie screen for a fraction of a second is also a popular example.

Several decades ago, people started selling recordings with subliminal messages. These recordings claimed to have subliminal messages that could help people do everything from quitting smoking to learning a foreign language. This technique has since been debunked.

If any popular album covers or records have included subliminal messages, no one has confessed to doing it. It is, after all, considered to be an attempt at thought control.

Words spelled backwards or written in reverse are classic forms of code. They are not subliminal. In order to be subliminal, people aren’t supposed to be able to see them — that’s the whole point. Words recorded backwards aren’t subliminal either. In order for them to be perceived as anything other than garbled noise, they have to be played in reverse.