There are those songs that captivate us so much that we overlook the small details in them.
It’s similar to when you’re caught up in a song’s rhythm, singing along without thinking, only to later realize the startling meaning of the lyrics.
Flo Rida’s Whistle, we’re looking at you.
In a similar vein, social media users have recently uncovered something noteworthy about a particular Coldplay song from 2002 and its music video.
The track is titled ‘The Scientist’, featuring Chris Martin, the band’s frontman, walking backward through various intense scenes that seem almost impossible.
It turns out that the video was filmed in reverse to achieve this effect.
To create the reverse motion, Martin had to learn to sing the lyrics backward, a fact that continues to amaze people even today.
The video’s director, Jamie Thraves, shared with MTV in 2003 that he was inspired by the lyric ‘back to the start’, which influenced his decision to use reverse motion to depict Martin returning to the scene of a car crash involving his on-screen girlfriend.
A resurfaced clip from an old interview shows Martin demonstrating his skill in singing backwards, and it has once again captured the attention of viewers on social media.
One viewer remarked: “Damn, the dedication to have learned the whole song backwards just to bring that idea to fruition! Must have taken weeks of trial and error. Mad respect.”
Another added: “Wow, never seen anything about him singing it in reverse before!”
Yet another viewer commented: “I mean, he can even sing his songs backwards, so beat that every other celebrities.”
Someone else noted: “You know you really love your own songs when you can sing them backwards,” while another person simply said they were “Blown away.”
Thraves explained: “I had this idea that I wanted to do a story that’s tragic but starts off happy and ends happy, and the video is about rewinding to that happy ending.”
He elaborated: “The original idea was a straight narrative without the lead singer in the video. But Chris wanted to be in the video and he was really excited to learn how to sing the song backward.”
Thraves continued: “He got a tape of the song recorded backward and he listened to it over and over. He’s a very passionate guy, so he got really into it.
“What we learned later on is about the problems with phonetics, because you have to be very careful with the lip movement so that when you end on a sound your mouth is formed in the right way.”
Well, at least that mystery has been solved.