Lyrics by Benjamin Lamb

Music Masters with Hidden Facts, feat. Rush, Pink Floyd, etc.

As music fans, we’re always looking for cool new ways to listen to our favorite tunes. With the rise of vinyl and lossless audio over the past few years, we have been able to enjoy music in a better format, but what about hearing new or secret things in our favorite music ?

That’s what we’re diving into today, some cool stuff hidden in your favorite albums and music. There are no secret messages or reverse meanings, just a list of songs with a secret that the author intended.

Read all the latest features, columns and more here.

Rush – ‘YYZ’

The Canadian rock trio dazzled fans around the world with their unique blend of rock and prog, each member as virtuosic as the last. They’ve always been known as a band that put a lot of care and detail into their hundreds of amazing tracks, dropping a huge Easter egg in their hit “YYZ.”

It’s an instrumental track on its own, but the listening experience is great after knowing the easter egg that’s hidden there – YYZ is the airport code for the international airport of Toronto, the band’s hometown, and there is a morse code used to identify the airport, which inspired much of the song’s instrumentation, rhythm and time signature. These guys were truly some of the greatest musical minds.

Radiohead – Child A

Radiohead and vocalist/frontman Thom Yorke have always been focused on more than music, dedicated to artwork, an amazing live show, and giving fans a cool experience listening to their music.

Their 2000 album Child A was unlike anything fans had ever heard from Radiohead, incorporating elements of electronica, moving away from the grunge rock styles that had propelled them into the mainstream years before.

Child A featured a number of cool, but not musically, easter eggs all focused on the album cover. Child A included a secret CD album booklet that was hidden under the CD tray. The booklet was jam-packed with words and stories bordering on weird and weird, which secretly turned out to be lyrics and song titles from the band’s next two albums, amnesic and Hello thief.

Pink Floyd – “Blank Spaces”

Even if you’ve never heard a Pink Floyd song before, you know they are extremely focused on the music, with every sound and intricate detail heavily geared towards listener engagement and enjoyment.

Arguably Pink Floyd’s most iconic album is 1979 The wall, and as a nod to the many apparent satanic messages that were hidden in music at the time, vocalist Roger Waters hid a message on “Empty Spaces”, which can only be heard on the left channel.

It says: “Congratulations, you have just discovered the secret message, please send your reply to Old Pink, c/o Funny Farm, Chalfont”.

A funny lick in the cheek to other secret messages of music at the time. Put on your headphones and see if you can hear it below.

Tool – 10,000 days

Tool are one of the biggest genre bands in the music world, blending many different eras of rock and heavy metal into a number of hit albums.

The band’s 2006 album 10,000 days had an easter egg that can be described as a music lover‘s delight. The album contained a hidden track, but fans had to create it on their own.

If you join ‘Wings For Marie’ with ‘Viginti Tres’ and top it all off with ‘10,000 Days’, the result will be an epic like you’ve never heard before. Check out a fan’s build of the hidden track below.

Taylor Swift – “Me!”

She may not be the most popular artist among Mixdown readers, but there’s no doubt that Taylor Swift writes great music and works hard at her craft. Unless you talk to Damon Albarn.

Swift has been re-recording her work lately so she can restore ownership, and fans have been inundated with cool little Easter eggs and hidden messages about things in her re-recorded music.

In his new track “Me!” which features Brendon Urie from Panic! at the Disco, the video is full of hidden messages about the songs she’s releasing, and most notably, tagged the name of her next single, “Lover.” Dive into all the other cool Easter Eggs here.

Guns N’ Roses – ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’

They’ve had their ups and downs, but there’s no doubt that Guns N’ Roses are one of the most iconic bands and have influenced the world of rock music forever.

The group recently reunited after a few years apart, bringing back Slash and Duff McKagan with vocalist Axl Rose.

It’s a song we’ve all sung loudly at a party, but it contains some pretty intriguing Easter eggs.

As anyone reading this knows, the song ends with Axl singing “Where do we go now?” but he was actually the one asking the producer and the bandmates in the studio, as they had no lyrics for the end of the song. It is now part of the fabric of the song and could not be understood without it.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – “If You Have to Ask”

The Red Hot Chili Peppers maintained their strong position in the industry for a number of years, continuing to release music to this day and receiving as much acclaim as they did in the 90s.

The band are often praised for their incredible funk rock approach carried for so long by talented guitarist John Frusciante, their amazing bassist Flea, Chad Smith keeping it down and Anthony Kiedis being addicted to shindig.

On their worldwide hit album Sex Magik blood sugar, the album opened with a track called “If You Have to Ask”, which ends with a pretty cool Easter egg. As you’ll hear below, Frusciante ends the song with a killer solo, and cheers are heard. The solo was completely improvised by John, and cheers were from producers and others in the studio’s reaction to the killer solo.

For more on RHCP in the studio, check out Jake Brown’s book.