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10 Hidden Subliminal Messages In Pop Music pt. 2

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The Weeknd’s masked stare and Katy Perry’s boxing gloves hide more than they show.

TheThings Celebrity’s follow-up countdown, “10 Hidden Subliminal Messages In Pop Music pt. 2,” digs past the obvious lyrics and hooks to focus on what directors and artists bury in the frame itself. Rather than chasing backmasked audio or reversed-tape conspiracy theories, the video breaks down deliberate visual choices — the kind of imagery meant to be paused, screenshotted, and argued over on forums for weeks. The two videos doing the heaviest lifting in this installment are The Weeknd’s “Starboy,” released in September 2016, and Katy Perry’s 2016 anthem “Rise.”

• The countdown centers heavily on The Weeknd’s “Starboy” (September 2016) and Katy Perry’s “Rise,” both analyzed frame-by-frame for embedded symbolism.
• The video’s core argument is that pop imagery is intentional visual metaphor crafted by directors and artists, not accidental audio trickery or backmasking.
• Three recurring categories drive the list: nods to past celebrity relationships, coded drug references, and sexual innuendo folded into mainstream video iconography.

Reading The Weeknd’s “Starboy” Like A Text

Directed with the kind of stark, symbol-heavy staging Abel Tesfaye has leaned on since he ditched the mystery-man persona for a bleach-blond fringe, “Starboy” gives the countdown plenty to chew on. The video’s imagery — smashed trophies, a burning mansion, a masked figure torching relics of his old identity — gets read by TheThings Celebrity as a visual rejection of The Weeknd’s earlier brand, right down to the physical destruction of items tied to his back catalog. The countdown frames this as the clearest example in the video of an artist using imagery, not lyrics, to signal a reinvention the audience is meant to notice and dissect.

Katy Perry’s “Rise” And The Reading Between The Lines

“Rise” gets pulled apart for a different kind of symbolism — the countdown treats Perry’s stripped-down, athletic visuals as loaded with meaning about personal reinvention and endurance rather than pure Olympic tie-in marketing. The video draws attention to specific shots and staging choices that fans and outlets speculated were nods to Perry’s own life, the same kind of speculation the artists in this list of musicians that are nothing like they seem have learned to court rather than avoid.

The point isn’t hidden audio tricks — it’s imagery built to be paused, screenshotted, and argued about.

The Method Behind The Symbolism

What separates this countdown from typical subliminal-message clickbait is its focus. TheThings Celebrity isn’t chasing reversed vocal tracks or claims about secret messages buried in mixes; it’s cataloguing visual choices — wardrobe, props, lighting, staging — that carry a second layer of meaning for viewers willing to look for it. The three recurring categories the video keeps circling back to are references to past relationships, drug imagery disguised as set design, and sexual innuendo folded into otherwise mainstream choreography and camera work.

Pop Stars Adopt Viral Marketing

The video’s larger point is that ambiguity is a strategy. Leaving imagery open to interpretation keeps fans engaged in decoding rather than passive watching, and it stretches a single music video’s shelf life across weeks of think-pieces, Reddit threads, and reaction videos. It’s the same appetite for parasocial detective work that fuels endless breakdowns of who said what about whom, the sort of scrutiny some pop figures have leaned into and others — as covered in pieces like People Katy Perry Treated Like Trash — have had turned against them.

Whether every symbol TheThings Celebrity flags was actually intentional is beside the point for a countdown built to spark debate rather than settle it. “Starboy” and “Rise” gave the internet fresh frames to freeze and argue over within weeks of release, and that’s exactly the shelf life pop videos are increasingly built for — clicks now, theories for months after.