Empty Spaces is a song by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, featured as the eighth track on their 1979 rock opera The Wall. It is the second known song by Pink Floyd to contain a backmasked message.
It is isolated on the left channel of the song. When heard normally, it appears to be nonsense. If played backwards, the following can be heard:
–Hello, Luka [hunters]… Congratulations. You have just discovered the secret message. Please send your answer to Old Pink, care of the Funny Farm, Chalfont…
–Roger! Carolyne’s on the phone!
–Okay.
Roger Waters congratulates either a girl named Luka, or ‘hunters’ (i.e. people who deliberately look for backward messages hidden in songs) for finding this message, and jokes that she (or they) can send her (or their) answer to “Old Pink” (being either a comical reference to Syd Barrett, or a foreshadowing of Pink’s eventual insanity), who lives somewhere in a funny farm (a term to describe a psychiatric hospital) in Chalfont. Before he can reveal the exact location, however, he gets interrupted by someone (James Guthrie) in the background who says Carolyne (Waters’ then wife) is on the phone.
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