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The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet
Featured Episode
About
The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet is a nickname given to a song that likely was recorded from a German radio station during the 1980s. Neither the song's title nor the recording artist were known, and once the song began to spread on social media, many internet users began working together in an attempt to uncover the song's information. On November 4th, 2024, Redditor marjin1412 identified the song as "Subways of Your Mind" by a German band called FEX, ending the mystery.
Origin
On March 18th, 2007, spiritofradio.ca user bluuue uploaded an excerpt of the song on spiritofradio.ca saying that it was recorded from a german radio station in the '80s.
On the same day, the excerpt of the song was posted on best-of-80s.de by the user bluuue (who signed as "Anton" at the end of his post)[1] where he added that they recorded the song probably from a german radio station named NDR2 in 1982-1984. In another thread, they wrote that they used to listen to NDR1/NDR2 radio station when there was a show "Music for Young People" (Musik für junge Leute). This led to speculation that they recorded the song from this show.
Spread
On April 17th, 2011, a YouTube user redoalfo uploaded the same excerpt on YouTube. The video is named "Unkonow Song – Cancion Desconocida – Track Id." There, it gained 7,100 views in eight years (shown below).
2019-2020
In 2019, the search for the song was reinvigorated by YouTuber Gabriel Vieira. On April 7th, 2019, Gabriel uploaded the excerpt of the song on his YouTube channel. He also wrote information about the song in the description.
A friend of mine (Nico from Dead Wax Records) was looking for this song a while ago, and I became interested too. Unfortunately I do not have the full song, I do not know the nationality of the band and I do not know if they are singing in English, although it seems that the song is sung in English, I'm not sure if the band is British, American, Russian, German, French, etc…
What makes it difficult to identify this song is that the softwares & websites that have the function of identifying songs (for example: Shazam), does not recognize this song, that is, this means that the band is an independent band that maybe recorded this song on a cassette tape and never released it, or if it was released, it was by an independent label.
Listening to the song, we can notice that the band is formed by: Singer, Drummer, Guitar player 1, Guitar Player 2, Bass player and a keyboard player, but that's something that we can't confirm 100%. Probably the title of this song is "Like The Wind", but that's another thing we can not confirm it, because the origin of this song is unknown, I do not know where it came from, but for it to be here online, surely someone put it on the internet!
The most acceptable hypothesis is that this song was broadcasted by some radio station, and someone recorded it in the 1980s. Apparently this song is mono, it means that maybe this song was captured from a radio station or some TV in the '80s. I discovered that when I removed the central channel of this, and the track was completely empty. This happens only with mono recordings. Although we have no concrete proof that this is true, it is most likely. That is, we have two possibilities: Someone recorded this from some radio broadcast, or this song may have been taken from some demo tape recorded by the band, which is perhaps a local band that never got famous, or never released anything officially. There is another possibility, I posted about it in several communities on Reddit, and several people told me that they would have heard this song before in some horror movie, probably some B-Movie, but I have no idea if this is true, but we would have to add it to our investigation. I downloaded the audio from the 2011 video posted by redoalfo, and I realized that the audio waves are practically at low volume, this suggests that this may actually have come from some television or some radio broadcast. Because if it was taken from some demotape, surely the audio would be very loud.
I already used the advanced search method in Discogs (the largest database of rare/independent music on the internet), searching for the title "Like The Wind", but unfortunately I did not find anything about this song, that is, it means that maybe the title of the song is not "Like The Wind", as some people commented in this video, there is a possibility the singer is talking "Fly Away", "Found a Way", there are several possibilities, but we will not know which one will be right. There is also the possibility of the singer actually speaking "Like The Wind", but the true title may be something totally out of context with the lyrics of the song. There is also another possibility: The title may be "Like The Wind", but I have not found anything on discogs because this song is so rare that it was not even released by anyone independently. I really do not know which way to go, I really want to find this song, but there are many possibilities to be examined, which makes the search much more harder.
Please share this video in groups of Darkwave, Obscure 80s, any group that can help to identify this. Thank you!
On April 20th, 2019, Gabriel created his Reddit account named gabgaskins. Then he began posting on several subreddits, asking if someone can identify the song. He claimed that he has known the song since 2006 and has been trying to find the name of it, but without success. On July 1st, 2019, a subreddit r/TheMysteriousSong[7] was created by Gabriel, gaining over 2,800 followers.
On the same day, user newacountz wrote a comment on r/TheMysteriousSong[2] in which he said that a man named Paul Baskerville could be the person who played the song on the show Musik für junge Leute. Gabriel then contacted Paul via Facebook. On July 10th, 2019, YouTuber Whang! made a video about the song.[3] That day, Gabriel commented under his video saying that Paul responded to him (shown below, left).
On July 12th, 2019, Redditor johnnymetoo posted a full version of the song on r/TheMysteriousSong[4] claiming he downloaded it in 2007 from Usenet. Later that day, Gabriel Vieira uploaded the full version on his YouTube channel.
On July 21st, 2019, Paul Baskerville played the song on his radio show Nachtclub. On the following day he contacted Gabriel saying that the responses from his listeners suggested that he had maybe never played the song in 1982, 1983 or 1984. On August 2nd, a website called themysterioussong.com was launched. On the same day, Whang! uploaded a video named "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet UPDATE" on YouTube where he talks about new information about the song.
After Paul Baskerville, several people were contacted (for example Guido Wampers, the vocalist of the band Portrait Bizzare), but no one recognized the song. On August 20th, 2019, the song was played on a german radio station Radio Eins, Paul Baskerville was also interviewed there, but no new information was gained by this. On the same day, Gabriel (u/gabgaskins) posted a post titled "UPDATE AUGUST 20th, 2019" on r/TheMysteriousSong, saying that he was contacted by a woman who claims to be the person who was searching for the song in 2007 and posted the first record of it on the Internet[9]. She explained that her brother did the radio recording in the 80s and she sent him a photo of a list of songs her brother allegedly recorded (shown below).
A girl called me on Messenger today with this message: Hi Gabriel, I found out about you looking for the source of the "most mysterious song on the internet".
Well, I cannot tell you who the singer of the song is, but I can tell you that my brother did the radio recording in the early 80s and I am the person, who put this question into several places on the internet.
Someone postet that the first person asking for help in revealing the song was somebody named Anton Riedel. So, even if that sounds crazy, that's really me, I used that as a nickname for a couple of years for several reasons.
Let me know if you have further questions 📷
best wishes from northern Germany,
Lydia
Many people were skeptical about the claim and wanted proof from the sender of the message that they are the user bluuue/Anton who posted the recording on the Internet. On the following day, user bluuely wrote a comment under Gabriel's post saying that she is the sender and that she can prove her identity by responding to a private message from her profile (bluuue) on the website best-of-80s.de.
On August 23rd 2019, user bluuely wrote a post on r/TheMysteriousSong titled "Update from Lydia"[10]. The post contained further clarification of some facts.
Hi again to all!
Seeing the reactions on my first posting is somehow irritating and shocking. I never expected to cause so much excitement! And it seems that not everybody is convinced that I am who I am, so I decided to give some more input into this.
But first of all: there are no news yet about the band. My brother is still checking some leads, but none of them seem to be very promising. We will give more information about that soon.
In my last post I mentioned the idea of exchanging PNs on best-of-80s.de but was suggested to make an official post on the board so everybody will be able to see it. Very good idea, I liked it, but wasn't able to do that yet. The board wouldn't let me create new topics, not even respond to existing ones. Maybe that's because of my long time of inactivity, I don't know. I contacted the admins, but as long as they don't change my status, only PNs are possible.
To keep it short, I will give some answers to questions from several subreddits here:
- the old email address doesn't exist anymore. It's because macnews changed their price politics and started demanding money for their service. It's ok to do that, but I decided to switch to gmail then.
- no, I didn't transition from Anton to Lydia if that means an gender transformation or something like that. Nothing like that happened.
- no, Anton doesn't even exist. There are only me and my brother. He is the one who did the recording, he owns the original tape which still exists, and he also did the digitalization. I was the person who uploaded the song and appeared under the pseudonym Anton for some time.
- the full tape won't help you at all because it wasn't recorded at once. It consists of single tracks which have been recorded over a couple of days or maybe even weeks. And to make things more, MUCH MORE complicated, my brother told me today that he sometimes made changes to his tapes using a second tape deck, and possibly tape 4 was one of them, what would mean that the sequence of songs could have been totally different in the beginning.
- but: yes, I do have the song in a better quality and as stereo. I haven't decided yet if I am going to upload it or not, but will do that shortly.
- no, my account on best-of-80s.de has not been hijacked. Feel free to ask the admins if someone required an email address reset.
Someone said, it makes no sense to ask me for the names of my cats when all the answers can be found on the internet. I agree fully to that. But I can offer something different to finally let this issue about my identity come to an end: when checking my email program Thunderbird I found out that I still own all of the old messages from the newsgroups. So I add an screenshot to this post. Of course this could be created with photoshop, but to be honest – who would do that and WHY should someone do that?
I would be happy if you could end the chase for Anton/Lydia/bluuue because there really is no need for that. Maybe you expected the truth to be more exciting, but we still have no clue about the band, the band's nationality, the exact year of the release or even the lyrics. These are the things I would like to focus on. My brother and I will go through the old postings here and see if we can pick up some helpful information.
Please keep on spreading the word, because I am absolutely convinced that one day it will reach somebody who will be able to disclose this mystery.
Good night to everyone in Europe and a good day for the rest.
cheerz, Lydia
A few hours after her response, Lydia wrote a comment under her post saying that her brother sent an email to Gabriel.
On August 26th, August 28th, September 2nd, September 22nd and November 8th, 2019, Lydia made five additional updates where she clarified certain information and posted the recording of the song in both mp3 and flac forms.[11][12][13][14][15] The song started gaining more attention and started appearing in articles from news outlets like CTV News[16] and German ones like Zeit Online.[17] In December 2019, a Wikipedia article about the song was created.[18]
On June 17th, 2020, Whang! made a third video concerning the song Later that month, the possibility of the song being made before 1983 was ruled out because of some equipment the band members used in the recording.
On July 10th, 2020, Reddit user FlexxonMobil made a post in the song subreddit where he claimed he had obtained a list of songs played in Paul Baskerville's radio show.[19] He had contacted NDR and obtained broadcast logs of songs played in the Musik für junge Leute show. He then gave the users of the subreddit and discord server a list of the songs,[20] after checking all of them, it was confirmed that none of them was the Most Mysterious Song.
Song Details
Lyrics
The lyrics can't be heard clearly in the recording, which has caused many interpretations of them. On July 13th, Redditor Patrick_85 posted his interpretation of lyrics on r/TheMysteriousSong[5]:
Like the wind
You came here running
Take the consequence of leaving
There's no space
There's no tomorrow
There's no sent communication
Check it in, check it out
The sun will never shine
They're a long way away
In the subways of your mind
Like the wind
You're gonna suffer
Let us drown in your own failure
There's no place
And there's no sorrow
In the young and restless dreamer
Check it in, check it out
The sun will never shine
They're a long way away
In the subways of your mind
Check it in, check it out
The sun will never shine
They're a long way away
In the subways of your mind
Check it in, check it out
It's the summer blues
Tear it in, tear it out
Is it really you?
Several Redditors started posting their interpretations on TheMysteriousSong Discord server, where a channel #lyrics was created. The sixth line, interpreted as "There's no sent communication" by Patrick_85 is one of the most discussed lines. Users can agree that the first half of it is "There's no", but can't agree on the second half. Some users are interpreting it as "There's no safe communication", others like "There's no sense for new division" explaining that the song is probably talking about Cold War and the "division" refers to the division of Germany or the whole of Europe. Some users are claiming that he's singing "unification," which could also refer to Berlin Wall that divided Germany at that time. The third line, interpreted as "Take the consequence of leaving" by Patrick_85 is sometimes interpreted as "Take the consequence of living" or "Take the consequence forever." One of the lines which are being repeated after the instrumental part, interpreted as "Is it really you?" by Patrick_85, is also debated. Some of the Reddit, Discord and YouTube users are interpreting it as "It's reading you", others as "If they're reading you", " 'cause I'm leaving you" or "What's the real excuse?". Other lines from the song have various interpretations as well. Some users suggested that the lyrics may not be in English, but in some other language like German or Danish.
The most popular theory is that the song is about Cold War, communism in East Germany or the Berlin Wall. Other theories are that the singer is singing about a breakup, a girl he can't get and other similar personal things.
The Name of the Band
Many bands that sound similar to the one playing in the recording were found, but none of them was confirmed to be the band behind the song. On August 3rd, 2019, user Gene_Rottenberry wrote a post on r/TheMysteriousSong where he claimed that he sent the recording to his uncle who said it is a german band called "Subigkeiten Jungs."[6] Users started to say that the first word is probably "süßigkeiten", but no band with the name Süßigkeiten Jungs, Süßigkeitenjungs or a similar name was found. User Gene_Rottenberry also wrote that his uncle was sure that he has a copy of the record and that he "remembers that the album cover has a painting of a girl on it" and he will try to find the record. Many users believed that Gene_Rottenberry was trolling since there was no evidence of the band's existence, but on August 5th, he edited his post and wrote an update saying his uncle found the record. He also attached two pictures of the album (shown below). On August 7th, 2019, Reddit users discovered that the second picture was photoshopped, which caused moderators to remove the post. On August 12th 2019, user Gene_Rottenberry himself posted the first picture on r/fakealbumcovers.[8]
Discovery
On November 4th, 2024, Redditor marjin1412 posted that they had finally found "The Mysterious Song" in /r/TheMysteriousSong,[21] gaining over 6,300 points in a matter of hours. The song is called "Subways of Your Mind" by German '80s band FEX. It was uploaded to YouTube shortly after by user Funk Overload.
/u/Marjin1412 was able to find an article in an 80s German newspaper archive that described FEX winning a local talent show. They then contacted one of the members of FEX to see if they had old material, where they found The Mysterious Song. The member, Michael Hädrich, stated the band is going to reunite and rerecord the song.
Search Interest
External References
[1] best-of-80s.de (via Wayback Machine) – Gesucht: 80er Indie-Wave-Song
[2] Reddit – newacountz's comment
[3] YouTube – The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet – Tales From the Internet
[4] Reddit – Here's the complete song. Downloaded it in 2007 from the link posted by Anton on the Usenet, and just found it on my harddisk. Hope it helps.
[6] Reddit – My music-obsessed uncle may have solved the mystery! He also claims to have a copy of the record hidden somewhere among his massive collection.
[7] Reddit – /r/TheMysteriousSong
[8] Reddit – Sußigkeiten Jungs (Candy Boys) – Ein
[9] Reddit – UPDATE AUGUST 20th, 2019
[10] Reddit – Update from Lydia
[11] Reddit – update 3 from Lydia
[12] Reddit – Update 4 from Lydia
[13] Reddit – Update 5 from Lydia
[14] Reddit – Update 6 from Lydia – full tape recording
[15] Reddit – Update 7 from Lydia – Topic: the radio DJs
[16] CTV News – Help solve a decades-long mystery: What is the name of this mysterious 80s song?
[17] Zeit Online – Wer kennt diesen Song?
[18] Wikipedia – The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet
[19] Reddit – 🚨🚨🚨 WORLD EXCLUSIVE: I HAVE OBTAINED THE 1984 SONG LIST FROM PAUL BASKERVILLE'S RADIO SHOW "MUSIK FÜR JUNGE LEUTE," PLUS THE BACKSTORY ON HOW I GOT IT (*NOT CLICKBAIT*) 🚨🚨🚨
[20] Google Spredsheets – MFJL Playlist Search [CONFIRMED TO NOT BE TMS]
[21] Reddit – TMS is Found
Top Comments
Swoot
Nov 04, 2024 at 12:44PM EST
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Nov 04, 2024 at 12:46PM EST