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The video game Kingdom Hearts 2 was released in the United States last week, and the theme song "Sanctuary" by Hikaru Utada is remarkable in that it sounds like parts of it are backwards. It certaintly isn't the first time a pop song with backwards parts ("Work It" by Missy Elliot is the first example that comes to mind), but it's still not very common and makes an interesting piece of music. Since I'm obviously an expert at finding hidden backwards messages in pop songs, finding intended backwards messages should be a breeze. So, I took out my Audacity and, as Missy would say, put my thing down, flipped it and reversed it to find out if there were indeed backwards messages in the song.

There are! "I need more affection than you know" appears many times throughout, in the choruses especially, and two other phrases, "So many ups and downs" and another one that isn't quite intelligible that appears around 1:45 appear once each. The same backward phrase appears in the Japanese version ("Passion") too.

So, there you have it. The secret message is that Hikaru (or more likely, either Sora or Kairi from the game) needs more affection than you know.