The Viral Search for a Mysterious ‘80s Song May Finally Be Over

After almost two decades of searching, and five years as a viral internet phenomena, the search for ‘The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet’ may finally be over.

For years now, music fans have been attempting to track down the authorship of a forgotten new wave song which had been recorded off German radio in the mid-1980s. The search first began in 2007 when an internet user by the name of Lydia took to online forums to try and identify the song, which had been recorded to cassette by her brother Darius decades earlier.

Following some modest attention, it wasn’t until 2019 that the search began in earnest, with users on social media and sites such as YouTube focusing their efforts on identifying the track, which had been dubbed “Like the Wind” in accordance with what appeared to be its opening lyric.

Over the past five years, a number of impressive discoveries were made, including researchers determining the likely recording date of the song due to the release of other songs on the tape and the presence of a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer (which was released in 1983), and confirming the veracity of the recording by identifying a frequency present within German broadcasts of the era.

However, on Monday (Nov. 4), Marijn1412, a user of the Reddit community dedicated to the search claimed that the song had been identified as “Subways Of Your Mind” by German band FEX.

According to the user, the song was discovered during research of contemporary German music event Hörfest, which FEX had been involved in. After contacting a member of the group, the song was reportedly confirmed as belonging to FEX, with the band member claiming a re-release was in the works.

Michael Hädrich, the keyboardist, guitarist, and backing vocalist of FEX, spoke to German publication Tz, claiming that the band knew nothing of the viral search until he was contacted.

“We hadn’t noticed all this internet phenomenon at all, mainly naturally, because the title of the song was not known on the Internet and was therefore no relation,” Hädrich explained. As he continued, he noted it was only when the Reddit user requested copies of his old material that the rediscovery of the song was made.

“Only then did he point me out whether I didn’t realize that the song ‘Subways of your Mind’ is the ‘Most Mysterious Song on the Internet’.”

Currently, the song is in the process of being verified, with Hädrich claiming that he and the group have numerous materials on hand which can prove the song is theirs, including the original recording session, statements, live recordings, and witnesses who were present for the initial session.

If found to be true, the discovery marks another successful discovery in the field of what has been dubbed “lostwave”, or music whose origins are unknown.

In April, another viral lostwave search came to an end, with the song dubbed “Everybody Knows That” being identified as Christopher and Phillip Booth’s “Ulterior Motives”, which had been originally composed for a pornographic film in the 1980s.