Reminder: Ballad of the Goddess is just Zelda's Lullaby Backwards

It's been several years since The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword came out. We're now in year three, I think, of Breath of the Wild being the most recent Zelda game.

I'll confess that I didn't like Skyward Sword as much as I wanted to (actually same with Breath of the Wild) but there is one element that I really find awesome:

Skyward Sword's big musical theme, its main title as it were, is the Ballad of the Goddess:

It's a stirring, heroic piece of music that really seems like a great call to adventure.

But there's a secret to it (read the title of the post if you want a spoiler): The main musical phrase of it is actually just Zelda's Lullaby reversed. No change in pace or rhythm. You can literally just reverse the song and you'll hear Zelda's Lullaby.

I still find this mind-blowing. The two melodies sound so profoundly different, despite being exact mirror images of one another.

I do not know much about music theory, so maybe someone else could explain how this works, but it feels really magical.

And it plays into the story of the game:

Spoilers ahead for an 8ish-year-old game:

Skyward Sword is the earliest-set Zelda game chronologically. While Ocarina of Time had been the "prequel game" back in the day, telling us how the dark lord Ganon became the horrible pig-demon he is, Skyward Sword goes pre-Ganon, pre-Hyrule world where the Goddess Hylia actually raised a kingdom into the sky so that it could be safe of the dangers on the surface.

We eventually discover that Zelda, Link's childhood friend, is in fact an incarnation of the Goddess - which then goes on to explain how Zelda has shown up generations later in different lives. All this time she was the Goddess Hylia!

And so the Ballad of the Goddess sharing the same notes as Zelda's Lullaby makes sense: it's the same song about the same individual.