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Subways of Your Mind

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"Subways of Your Mind"
Song by unknown artist
Recordedc. 1984
Genre
Length2:55 (radio version)
"The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" on YouTube

"The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" (also known as "Like the Wind", "Blind the Wind", "Check It In, Check It Out" or "Take It In, Take It Out" after lines in fan-interpreted lyrics; acronymed as TMMSOTI or TMS) is the nickname given to a cassette recording of an unidentified song, most likely composed in the 1980s.

The song was reportedly recorded from a Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) radio broadcast sometime during the mid-1980s, likely in or after 1984.[1] Since 2019, this song has been the subject of a viral Internet phenomenon, with many users of sites such as Reddit and Discord involved in a collaborative effort to search for the song's origins and artist.[1]

Throughout the search, other unknown songs have been discovered. Users online have coined the term "Lostwave" to describe songs of this nature.

List of songs on the BASF 4|1 tape that includes "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet", labelled as "Blind the Wind", and a question mark indicating that the artist is unknown

Origin

A teenager and DJ named Darius S. recorded the song from a radio program on the North German public radio station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR).[1][2] He recorded the song on a cassette tape and made a mixtape, which also included songs from XTC and The Cure. To get clean recordings of songs, Darius purposely removed dialogue from radio hosts, which is likely why the exact airplay date and the title are unknown.[3]

In 2004, Darius' older sister, Lydia H., bought him a website domain as a birthday present, which he used to raise awareness of the unidentified songs in his personal collection. He then digitized his radio recordings, saving the songs as .aiff and .m4a files, and named the website Unknown Pleasures after the 1979 Joy Division album.[4]

On March 18, 2007, Lydia began her online search for the song on a Usenet group, but later migrated to websites with song identification tools. She posted a 1:15 excerpt of the song to best-of-80s.de (a German forum devoted to eighties synth-pop) and to The Spirit of Radio (a fan site dedicated to Canadian radio station CFNY-FM).[1][2] The song slowly spread across the Internet, being uploaded to WatZatSong in 2009 and to YouTube in 2011. Spanish indie record label Dead Wax Records posted the excerpt of the song to their YouTube channel in 2017. This caught the attention of Gabriel Pelenson, a friend of Nicolás Zúñiga (the owner of Dead Wax), who began searching for the song's origin in 2019.

Pelenson uploaded the excerpt of the song to his own YouTube channel and to many music-related Reddit communities, and eventually founded r/TheMysteriousSong.[5] On July 12, Reddit user u/johnnymetoo posted the complete version of the song, which he obtained from a link on one of Lydia's Usenet posts before deletion.[6][non-primary source needed]

Searchers made contact with individuals potentially pertinent to the search, such as Paul Baskerville (a disc jockey from NDR), GEMA (a German performance rights organization), and a YouTube channel named "80zforever", which posts obscure music.[1] Baskerville agreed to play the song on his then-current radio show Nachtclub on July 21, 2019.[7] Although no new leads came of it, it did make Lydia and Darius aware of the new wave of investigation, and Lydia subsequently became involved with the Reddit community in August.[7]

On July 9, 2020, Reddit user u/FlexxonMobil acquired the complete list of songs Baskerville had played on Musik Für Junge Leute in 1984 and published it on the site.[8] After some searching, users concluded that the song was not in that list, effectively ruling out the theory that Baskerville had played the song.[9] The remaining Musik Für Junge Leute playlists eventually arrived in December 2020, and after an extensive search, users concluded that the song was not played on Musik Für Junge Leute. In January 2021, the community received Der Club and Nachtclub playlists from October and November 1984, and found several songs that Darius and Lydia had taped, including those from the BASF 4|1 tape, leading users to believe the song would show up within the remaining playlists.[citation needed]

In late 2020, Discord user Fliere analyzed the tape recording of the song and found a 10 kHz line, which was also present on the other BASF 4|1 songs and some songs on BASF 4|2. This line was discovered to be present on virtually all NDR radio broadcasts at the time, but not on Hilversum radio broadcasts, effectively ruling out the possibility of the song being aired on any station other than NDR.[10]

On November 2, 2021, Lydia posted on Reddit that one of her sons had found a box full of tapes while renovating her apartment. One of the tapes contained a higher quality version of the song. The tape's track list was different from previous ones, though it is speculated to be made from the same recording, as it shares some of the same artifacts as the first tape.[11][non-primary source needed]

Theories

Searchers generally agree that the singer has some sort of European accent, but the specific type is unclear.[2] Some users have theorized that the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, which was released in late 1983, was used in the leads.[7][12]

There has been some speculation that the song was recorded in 1984, since most of the other songs on the cassette tape were released around that time. Further evidence for this is that the Technics tape deck, which Darius S. likely used to record the song, was manufactured that year.[1]

Paul Baskerville, who does not remember playing the song,[2] suspects that it was a demo recording that was played once by an NDR presenter and then thrown away.[13]

One article from March 2021 claims that the song was likely written and performed by Viennese singer Christian Brandl and drummer Ronnie Urini in 1983, with both German and English versions. The song would have been recorded in the studio of the late Fred Jakesch on Mariahilferstraße in Vienna. Alto saxophonist Heinz Hochrainer said he was present for a planned saxophone element, but that was never recorded. A preliminary mix of the song then would have made its way to NDR Radio in 1984. Urini confirmed the story and also provided an old typewritten version of the German lyrics as evidence. However, there are still some doubts since definitive proof is ultimately lacking. Robert Wolf, Brandl's musical colleague and the frontman of their band Chuzpe, said that he did not recognize Brandl's voice in the song and that the drums sounded more like an electronic drum machine than Urini.[14]

Viral internet phenomenon

On May 27, 2019, Australian music news website Tone Deaf wrote the earliest article focusing on the song, with author Tyler Jenke discussing the preliminary stages of the search for the track and noting that the search was similar to a 2013 search for a song which was ultimately identified as "On the Roof" by Swedish musician Johan Lindell.[15]

Between 2019 and 2021, American YouTuber Justin Whang posted five episodes of his series Tales from the Internet discussing the song and the progress of the search. His videos further galvanized Internet users to contribute to the effort to identify the song.[2][5]

In addition, a number of covers and remixed versions of the song have been created,[4] including a cover by American band Mephisto Walz titled "Like the Wind" and released on their 2020 album, All These Winding Roads.[16]

Profiting off from the song

An individual going by the nickname "antwon01" claimed the song as if they had made it, and uploaded it to Apple Music and Spotify. When the track is identified by Shazam, the app would return "antwon01" as the artist. It was also possible to buy the album. [17]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Browne, David (24 September 2019). "The Unsolved Case of the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  2. ^ a b c d e Jones, Alexandra Mae (2019-11-18). "Help solve a decades-long mystery: What is the name of this mysterious 80s song?". CTVNews. Archived from the original on 2023-05-24. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  3. ^ Reeve, Tanja (30 May 2020). "Die Jagd nach dem Most Mysterious Song on the Internet". Braunschweiger Zeitung. Archived from the original on 3 July 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  4. ^ a b "Most Mysterious Song: Wie die Suche nach dem rätselhaften Song begann". Spontis (in German). 10 September 2019. Archived from the original on 2020-08-12. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  5. ^ a b "This Mysterious Three-Minute Song Has The Internet Baffled". 2 Ocean's Vibe News. 2021-07-29. Archived from the original on 2021-12-26. Retrieved 2021-12-25.
  6. ^ "HELP US IDENTIFY THIS SONG!". 2019-07-09. Archived from the original on 2021-12-26. Retrieved 2021-12-25.
  7. ^ a b c "Como el viento. La historia de la canción más misteriosa de internet". Multimedios (in Spanish). 2021-05-03. Archived from the original on 2023-06-01. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
  8. ^ "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". 2020-07-09. Archived from the original on 2021-03-28. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  9. ^ FlexxonMobil (2020-07-11). "🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: PAUL BASKERVILLE LIKELY DID *NOT* PLAY THE SONG 🚨🚨🚨". r/TheMysteriousSong. Archived from the original on 2023-06-19. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  10. ^ "The Most Mysterious Song on Twitter: "OFFICIAL: A significant discovery has been made by #themysterioussong Discord User "fliere." There is a 10KHz line in the spectrogram for all NDR 2 recordings we have access to, including the recorded broadcast of #themysterioussong. (1/2)"". 2020-12-22. Archived from the original on 2021-12-26. Retrieved 2021-12-25.
  11. ^ "Lydia's reddit post". Reddit. u/bluuely. 2 November 2021. Archived from the original on 13 December 2021. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  12. ^ completed-circuit1 (2019-11-28). "Dx7 used in the song. Update". r/TheMysteriousSong. Archived from the original on 2023-06-19. Retrieved 2023-05-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ "Hamburg Journal: Der geheimnisvolle Song aus dem NDR Archiv | ARD Mediathek". www.ardmediathek.de (in German). Archived from the original on 2020-11-15. Retrieved 2020-12-09.
  14. ^ "Plattentests.de exklusiv: Rätsel um The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet gelöst?". Plattentests.de (in German). 2021-03-26. Retrieved 2023-12-02.
  15. ^ Jenke, Tyler (2019-05-27). "Can you help some internet sleuths identify a mysterious song?". Tone Deaf. Archived from the original on 2023-05-31. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
  16. ^ "Mephisto Walz Official "Like The Wind"". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-12-06.
  17. ^ "Most mysterious song".
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