There have always been a plethora of strange celebrity conspiracy theories, particularly regarding the music industry. Rumors about celebrity deaths, murders, impersonations, and more have persisted over the years despite attempts to debunk them. Less known, however, are conspiracy theories about musical artists’ album covers and the bizarre messages that are supposedly hidden in the artwork. Here are some of the strangest conspiracy theories about album cover art.

Music is one of the few things in life that is universally enjoyed. The first few notes of our favorite songs are enough to instantly brighten our day. Yet despite the good vibes, the music industry itself is a bit of a horror show. Between songs said to drive the listener mad, murderers citing song lyrics as inspiration, and supposedly cursed pieces of music, it’s enough to wipe the smile from anyone’s face. Check out these terrifying tales of musical mayhem.

McCollum’s parents were quick to accuse Osbourne of encouraging their son to commit suicide, claiming that lyrics like, “Suicide is the only way out,” had brainwashed him. They took the artist to court in 1986, where Osbourne claimed that the tragedy had been a simple misunderstanding. “ ‘Solution’ as in liquid, not a way out,” he explained. “The song’s about the dangers of alcoholism.”

The case was dismissed in 1988, but the supposedly evil tune wasn’t finished yet. The very same year the McCollums filed their lawsuit, another teen took his own life after listening to the notorious song. The result was another dismissed lawsuit—as well as a bizarre and unsettling pattern.

Arizona native Robert John Bardo, obsessed with actress Rebecca Schaeffer, stalked her for three years before murdering her outside her apartment building. Later in court, Bardo claimed the lyrics from “Exit” had inspired him to commit the savage point-blank shooting, specifically lines like “pistol weighing heavy.” When played during the trial, the normally emotionless Bardo disturbingly lit up, bobbing to the music and mouthing the lyrics.

Luckily, the senseless tragedy wasn’t pinned on the band, and Bardo was convicted of first-degree murder. He remains imprisoned—and presumably completely nuts—to this day.

For nearly 200 years now, a curse has plagued composers the world over: Soon after completing his ninth symphony, a musician is doomed to die. Despite all logic and rationality, a tenth symphony remains tragically just out of reach for a staggeringly large number of composers.

Beginning with Beethoven’s untimely death while penning his tenth in 1827, the curse has since claimed scores of classical musicians, such as Anton Bruckner, Vaughan Williams, and Antonin Dvorak.[3] Of course, it could be argued that the deaths are simply a product of old age. After all, it can take decades to write nine symphonies. But there are also the ridiculously early deaths of Gustav Mahler at 50 of heart failure and Franz Schubert of typhoid at a depressing 31, both after writing their ninth symphonies.

But fear not, would-be music makers, because American composer Philip Glass has recently beaten the dreaded curse. He wrote his tenth before releasing his ninth, just to be safe. It seems to have worked, although an audience member collapsed at number nine’s premiere.

We still tend to glamorize drug use to a certain extent when it pertains to the music industry. When drugs and alcohol are a staple of your day-to-day functions, like having a glass of orange juice, operating a moving vehicle, or getting up on a stage in front of thousands of screaming fans, you wouldn’t necessarily think about the repercussions of said intake. Drugs are often seen the ingredients for creativity, so there exists a romantic aura that ties their use to creative individuals. This extends beyond music, of course. Famous writers such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald are well-known for their prolific alcohol intake, and household name Stephen King has revealed his onetime dependency on alcohol and drugs to fuel his creativity.

However, this list focuses on musicians alone, as the music industry has a plethora of characters to chose from, but among them are those who truly experienced life on the edge and almost didn’t live to tell about it. The ten individuals below have defied medical expectations with their purported drug and alcohol intake, essentially because any medical professional would tell them that it is a miracle that they still live and breathe, let alone function.

The sugary-sweet sounds of Korean pop music seem pretty harmless. Simple songs like Psy’s “Gangnam Style” or the music of Girls’ Generation don’t exactly seem like hotbeds of corruption, but behind every hit song out of the K-pop machine are years of torment and exploitation.

Aspiring stars are pushed through the grinder of one of the most vicious entertainment industries in the world, starting when they’re kids. Children as young as ten years old get locked into unbreakable decade-long contracts, spending their better part of their lives owned by agencies that take advantage of them creatively and sexually.

Some come out celebrities, but most are just chewed up and spit out. They’re exploited and pimped out for years and then kicked to the curb, with nothing to show for going through the strangely dark and twisted world of Korean bubblegum pop.

Musicians have enjoyed courting controversy since the dawn of the culture surrounding popular music. Whether it’s reactionary, to gain notoriety, or just vacuous attention-grabbing, it usually makes for a strong statement when delivered to a mass audience. Entire subcultures have established themselves by utilizing controversy to drive a particular set of aesthetics, the 1970s punk movement being the most famous and canonized in popular culture. As it so happens, punk was one subculture to explicitly utilize Nazi-era style, imagery, and paraphernalia in clothing and popular culture, which also brought about the emergence of Nazi chic.

This isn’t just limited to punk bands; a more recent example involves the controversy surrounding Nicki Minaj and her usage of imagery which bears a similarity to SS symbols. However, this list focuses more on the overt usage of Nazi iconography and memorabilia as well as the artists’ rationale or motivation for doing so. Bands that are openly neo-Nazi or have real ties to neo-Nazis are excluded, like Ace of Base, whose founding member Ulf Ekberg started out his career as a neo-Nazi skinhead.[1]

Lemmy Kilmister’s fascination with Nazi memorabilia might not constitute flirting but rather outright infatuation. In an interview he gave to Rolling Stone for a major 2009 profile, he recalled an occasion when he brought a journalist into his home. Lemmy stated, “It was quite funny because I brought [the journalist] around to my house, which looks like a shrine to Nazism. But it’s just my collection. I mean, you can’t put it all in the cupboard; it won’t fit.”[2] However, it is unclear as to how amusing this was to that particular reporter.

Groupies usually don’t show up as much more than a footnote in music. They’re the girls who hang out backstage with the band, usually troubled girls from unhappy homes, struggling to find an escape by diving into the sex and drugs that go with rock ‘n’ roll. They’re treated as short-term lovers, minor conquests chalked up on the bedpost of a celebrity.

But some of them were a lot more than just one-night stands. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a scene of groupies who got close enough to the musicians that they changed their lives. Some inspired song lyrics, some birthed their children—and every one of them got their stars in a whole heap of trouble.

Robbie Hart (Adam Sandler) delivers the following line in The Wedding Singer: “I think that’s the hardest thing, to write a song. A song, you know, when people hear it they go: ‘Ooh, I know what that guy was feeling when he wrote that.’ ”

It is ultimately up to the songwriter whether he wants the inspiration for his lyrics to shine through clearly or whether the words are ambiguous, leaving the song open to interpretation by the listeners. On this list are stories (some very sad) that inspired the writing of very popular songs.

Groupies usually don’t show up as much more than a footnote in music. They’re the girls who hang out backstage with the band, usually troubled girls from unhappy homes, struggling to find an escape by diving into the sex and drugs that go with rock ‘n’ roll. They’re treated as short-term lovers, minor conquests chalked up on the bedpost of a celebrity.

But some of them were a lot more than just one-night stands. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a scene of groupies who got close enough to the musicians that they changed their lives. Some inspired song lyrics, some birthed their children—and every one of them got their stars in a whole heap of trouble.

We all love good songs. From love ballads to power ballads and rage-filled songs to dark world-building epics, we are drawn into a good rhythm and lyrics.

We usually assume that the artists are pouring their creative ideas and some of their own experiences into their music. But there are times that reality is so harsh that it needs to be put into music.

Either for catharsis or to expose hate, musicians have been secretly taking inspiration from crimes for a long time. Here is a list of popular songs that you won’t believe are based on a horrible crime.

The 1960s was one of the most memorable eras of the 20th century. It ushered in the civil rights movement, gave birth to the sexual revolution, and brought new political and social fervor in the midst of the Vietnam War and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The decade is also famous for the counterculture of sex, drugs, and, of course, rock and roll.

Some of the most iconic figures in the history of music rose to fame in this era. Many of these stars shared an eerie commonality in the years to follow—UFO sightings and alien encounters.

Was it genuine paranormal experience or simply a matter of psychedelic hallucination? You be the judge.

Heralded by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the “greatest guitarists of all time,” Jimi Hendrix was known for more than just his music. Hendrix had been an avid fan of all things outer space since he was a young boy. This fascination was compounded by his own UFO sighting outside his window—an incident corroborated by his brother, Leon.

Music is as integral to the human experience as anything else, perhaps even predating language itself. Though the human voice was probably the initial choice for prehistoric man, instruments have been found which date back more than 35,000 years.

Mythology has been similarly ubiquitous throughout human history. As such, myths have built up to explain various aspects of music, including its very creation. Here are ten of them.

Along with a flag and coat of arms, a national anthem is one of the core symbols of a country. Although several countries had their national anthems carefully crafted in peacetime, others simply transformed pro-uprising songs into anthems after their revolutions were successful.

Several nations with these pro-uprising anthems have edited them to be less warlike while others have maintained the original, explicit lyrics. Most songs on this list were not written in English, but we have provided the English translations for easier understanding.

Algeria’s “Qassaman” (“We Pledge” or “The Pledge”) would win the award for the most vicious of all national anthems if such an award existed. The lyrics were penned by author and revolutionist Moufdi Zakaria during his internment at the Serkaji-Barberousse Prison, where he had been incarcerated by the French colonists.

The first five lines of the anthem promise the French colonists a deadly revolution. It goes:

We swear by the lightning that destroys,
By the streams of generous blood being shed,
By the bright flags that wave,
Flying proudly on the high mountains,
That we are in revolt, whether to live or to die.

Just so the French colonists knew that the revolutionaries meant business, the song also says: “So we have taken the noise of gunpowder as our rhythm and the sound of machine guns as our melody.”

In an act of defiance, the lyrics even mention France, not once but twice:[1]

O France!
Past is the time of palavers
We closed it as we close a book
O France!
The day to settle the accounts has come!
Prepare yourself! Here is our answer!
The verdict, our Revolution will return it.

True to their word, the Algerians fought a war against France and won. They adopted the song as their national anthem when they gained independence on July 5, 1962.

The groundwork for Cuba’s independence and national anthem was laid on August 13, 1867, when some revolutionaries met in the home of Cuban lawyer and revolutionist Pedro Figueredo. By morning, the group had created a melody called “La Bayamesa” in honor of Bayamo, the name of the town where the revolution started on October 10, 1868.

It ended with the defeat of Spain 10 days later. As Spain surrendered, Figueredo added lyrics to the melody while seated on his horse. This was at the behest of the army and enthusiastic crowd, who could not believe they had defeated Spain.

The song was later adopted as the national anthem of Cuba after the removal of several sensitive stanzas criticizing Spain. This was necessary because Cubans have close family ties with Spain. Besides, several high-ranking Spanish officers had fought on the side of the revolutionists.

The original song contained anti-Spanish lyrics like:[2]

Fear not; the fierce Iberian
Are cowards as every tyrant.
Do not resist the angry Cuban
Forever their empire fell.
Free Cuba! Spain already died.

“Deutschlandlied” (“Song of Germany”) started off as a tune specifically written for Austrian Emperor Francis in 1797. In 1841, August Heinrich Hoffman von Fallersleben added lyrics to the melody to form the backboneof what would become Germany’s national anthem.

The lyrics called for the merging of the several German empires to form a single, unified German state. The song had several lines containing the words Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles (“Germany, Germany above all”).[3]

In 1840, a year before Hoffman von Fallersleben wrote the song, the Germans started agitating for the creation of a united German state due to fears that France was planning to invade the uncooperative empires. The song followed in 1841, and a revolution spread across the German empires in 1848.

Citizens demanded improved representation in the monarch-led governments. The revolution was inspired by the 1848 French revolution and a serious famine raging through the empires.

“Deutschlandlied” was one of the symbols of the uprising, which is known today as the March Revolution of 1848. The song became the German national anthem in 1922 and remained in use in West Germany after Germany split into two countries following World War II. However, when both countries reunited in 1990, the third stanza became the national anthem of the unified Germany.

“La Marseillaise” was composed by French army officer and musician Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle on the night of April 24, 1792, during the French Revolution. France had declared war on Austria four days earlier.

The mayor of Strasbourg, which happened to be the same town where Rouget de Lisle was based, asked that someone write a marching song for the army. Rouget de Lisle took up the challenge and wrote “Chant de guerre de l’armee du Rhin” (“War Song of the Army of the Rhine”).

However, it was better known as “La Marseillaise,” which later became its official name because it was mostly sung by soldiers from Marseille. France adopted the marching song as its national anthem on July 14, 1795.

Napoleon Bonaparte banned the anthem due to its revolutionary lyrics while he was in power. So did King Louis XVIII and Napoleon III. The anthem finally returned in 1879 and was never outlawed again.

As written by Rouget de Lisle, the original song had six verses. But two more were added over the years. However, only the first and sixth verses, complete with a graphic description of war, are usually sung.

The song calls on French citizens to raise arms against the “savage” tyrants who want to cut their throats. Then it orders French citizens to kill the tyrants so that their impure blood will water the French fields.[4]

“Desteapta-te, romane!” (“Awaken thee, Romanian!”) was originally a poem titled “Un rasunet” (“An echo”). It was written by Romanian poet Andrei Muresanu in support of the Romanian revolution of 1848. The uprising was part of the Revolutions of 1848 when citizens of several European states engaged in widespread protests over issues relating to famine and taxes.

The revolution in Romania started on June 11, 1848, and the poem was sung for the first time on June 29, 1848. Here are the first four lines of the purely nationalist anthem:

Awaken thee, Romanian, shake off the deadly slumber
The scourge of inauspicious barbarian tyrannies
And now or never to a bright horizon clamber
That shall to shame put all your nocuous enemies.

The song ends with:

We’d rather die in battle, in elevated glory
Than live again enslaved on our ancestral land.

Romanians often turn to the anthem for motivation during wars and revolutions. They sang it during the Independence War of 1877–1878, the two World Wars, and the December 1989 anti-Communist revolution.[5]

On June 11, 1898, Philippine composer Julian Felipe played the tune that would later be used for the Philippine national anthem. He played it for General Emilio Aguinaldo, who had requested a melody that would unite Filipinos in a revolution against Spain.

The song was first performed for the public on June 12, 1898, when Aguinaldo declared the Philippines to be an independent nation. Felipe called the melody “The Marcha Filipino Magdalo” after Aguinaldo’s wartime nickname and the name of his army.

What followed was a revolution that ended with Spain ceding the troubled colony to the United States in December 1898. A few months later in February 1899, the Filipino-American War broke out as the Philippines fought for independence from its new colonists.[6]

It was during this war that Jose Palma, a Filipino soldier, added the lyrics to Felipe’s tune. The song was sung throughout the war, which abruptly ended when Aguinaldo was captured in March 1901.

The United States banned the song. But it became the anthem of the Philippines when the country became independent in 1946. The song was renamed “Lupang Hinirang” (“Chosen Land”) and ends with the lines:

Our joy is when someone comes to oppress thee
Is to die while protecting thee from them.

In 1944, Nguyen Van Cao wrote a song titled “Tian Quan Ca” (“Marching Forward”) in support of Vietnam’s impending freedom. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam declared independence a year later and adopted “Tian Quan Ca” as its national anthem. Soon, the country found itself in a deadly war with its French colonists. The war ended with the defeat of France in 1954.

The radical anthem contains threatening lyrics like “the distant rumbling of the guns passes over the bodies of our foes” and “for too long we have swallowed our hatred.” One verse even clarified that Vietnam was prepared for a war: “The path to glory is built by the bodies of our foes.”

North Vietnam continued using the national anthem after it split from South Vietnam, but the song became the official anthem of the unified Vietnam when the two countries reunited. The national assembly proposed changing the anthem at that time but gave up the idea after citizens opposed the proposal.

However, the national assembly is considering changing the anthem again. Legislators in support of a new one claim that the lyrics of “Tian Quan Ca” are no longer relevant because Vietnam is no longer at war or clamoring for independence.[7]

The South African national anthem is the product of the merging of the two national anthems that South Africa had at the end of apartheid. From 1994 to 1997, the two anthems were “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (“God Bless Africa”) and “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika” (“The Call of South Africa”). Both songs were merged in 1997 to create a new anthem. The lyrics use five of South Africa’s most commonly spoken 11 official languages: Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans, and English.

“Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” is the rebellious one of the two anthems. In 1897, it was written by schoolteacher Enoch Sontonga. Originally, the song was a church hymn, but it became a song of resistance during the apartheid regime.

On the other hand, “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika” was a poem written by C.J. Langenhoven in 1918. After being set to music a few years later, it ultimately became South Africa’s national anthem alongside the United Kingdom’s “God Save the Queen” from 1936 to 1957 according to our sources. At that time, “Die Stem van Suid-Afrika” became the country’s only national anthem, which continued until 1994.[8]

In 1907, Peadar Kearney, a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (which wanted Ireland to be separated from the United Kingdom), wrote a song titled “Amhran na bhFiann” (“The Soldiers’ Song”). The song contained pro-independence lines like:

Sworn to be free,
No more our ancient sire land
Shall shelter the despot or the slave.

Kearney later cofounded the Irish Volunteers, who used the song as a marching song during the Easter Rising of 1916. The Irish Volunteers later metamorphosed into the Irish Republican Army, which fought a guerrilla war against the United Kingdom between 1919 and 1921.

The result was the splitting of Ireland into Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom, and Southern Ireland, which was an independent nation. Southern Ireland became the Irish Free State and then the independent state of Ireland (aka the Republic of Ireland).

The Irish Free State adopted “Amhran na bhFiann” as its national anthem in 1926. Before then, the country extensively deliberated over whether it wanted such a radical song as its national anthem. However, its citizens decided to keep the anthem when they realized that the French used a similar pro-revolutionary song as their national anthem.

Today, the anthem is often criticized for its divisive lyrics, especially by the citizens of Northern Ireland. These days, the Republic of Ireland’s rugby, hockey, and cricket teams use another song, titled “Ireland’s Call,” in place of their national anthem during international sporting events.[9]

“Indonesia Raya” (“Great Indonesia”) was written by Wage Rudolf Soepratman, who presented it at a national youth convention on October 28, 1928, in what is now Jakarta, Indonesia. The song called for the creation of a single state as the successor to the several colonies that formed the Dutch East Indies, which was under the control of the Netherlands.

Like other colonial powers of the day, the Netherlands followed a policy of “divide and rule” and divided the Dutch East Indies along ethnic lines, which indirectly turned the citizens against each other.

However, the song inspired the creation of an Indonesian nationalist movement that promoted the idea of a single Indonesian successor state. The Dutch never really suppressed the song. They allowed the Indonesians to sing it as long as they replaced several lines containing merdeka, merdeka(“independent and free”) with mulia, mulia (“honorable, honorable”).[10]

The Japanese banned the song while they occupied Indonesia during World War II. As a result, Indonesia only adopted “Indonesia Raya” as its national anthem when the country became independent in 1945.