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The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet

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"The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet"
Song by unknown
ReleasedUnknown
RecordedUnknown
GenreNew wave, post punk
Length2:55 (radio version)
LabelUnknown
Songwriter(s)Unknown
Producer(s)Unknown

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 verses in some fan-made lyrics) is the nickname given to a new wave song, most likely composed in the 1980s, whose origin, author, name, and original record date are unknown.

The song was recorded from a Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) broadcast at an unknown date (widely speculated to be in late 1983 or 1984). 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 origins of the song.[1]

Background

A list of songs on Darius' tape that includes the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet. Note that it is labeled under the name Blind the Wind instead.

According to a Rolling Stone article in September 2019, a man named Darius S. recorded the song in 1984, from a radio program called Musik Für Junge Leute ("music for young people") that he listened to on the German public radio station NDR.[1] According to Darius, he recorded the song on a tape labeled "Cassette #4," along with songs from XTC and The Cure that were also released around 1984. Further evidence that supports this as being the earliest possible airing date was the Technics tape deck that he most likely used to record the song on, which was manufactured in 1984 as well.[1] To get clean recordings of songs he purposefully did not include presentations of radio hosts, which is why the air date and the name is unknown.[2]

Sometime in 1985, Darius created a playlist titled "Unknown Pleasures," named after a Joy Division album. It consisted of this song and another unknown song, the latter of which was identified as "Old Ned" by Blue In Heaven. In 2004, Darius digitized his playlist and saved the songs as .aiff and .m4a files. Later that year, Darius' sister, who eventually identified herself as "Lydia H.", gave Darius a website domain as a birthday present. Darius used the domain to raise awareness of his playlist, which includes downloadable links for all songs.

In 2007, Lydia H. began posting the song on the internet (under the pseudonym "Anton Riedel"), in an attempt to identify the artist and title of the song.[3] She posted a digital snippet of the song to a German fansite devoted to eighties synth-pop and to spiritofradio.ca, a Canadian website devoted to identifying songs uploaded by fans.[1]

Viral Internet phenomenon

The mystery of the unidentified song gained viral popularity in 2019 when a Brazilian teenager named Gabriel da Silva Vieira began searching for evidence of its origin. He uploaded a clip of the song to YouTube and to many Reddit music subreddits.

On July 9, 2019, YouTuber Justin Whang posted an episode of Tales from the Internet discussing the song, and the progress of the search up to that point.[4] Upon the video's release, more Internet users have contributed to the effort to identify the song. So far, three episodes about the song have been made.

After the video's release, Reddit user u/johnnymetoo posted a complete clip of the song in July 2019, which he says he obtained from one of Lydia's posts on Usenet in 2007.[5] Since then, many contacts have been made which pertain to the search, such as Paul Baskerville, the DJ of the show from which the song was likely taped, although he has stated that he does not remember the song, and a YouTube channel named "80zforever", which has many videos of obscure music.[1] These contacts and leads are kept in a spreadsheet to keep track of the investigation. The community's official Discord server has also found various undocumented and/or obscure media of various genres.[citation needed][6]

On July 10, 2020, Reddit user u/FlexxonMobil had acquired the complete list of songs Baskerville had played on Musik Für Junge Leute in 1984 and published it onto the site.[7] However, after some searching, it was concluded that the song was not in that list, effectively ruling out the theory that Baskerville had played the song.[8] u/FlexxonMobil has since contacted NDR archivists for 1983 and 1984 playlists for other DJs, and is currently waiting for a response (as of August 2020).

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Browne 2019.
  2. ^ Reeve 2020.
  3. ^ Kim 2019.
  4. ^ "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet - Tales From the Internet".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. ^ "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. (original filename)".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. ^ "TheMysteriousSong".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  7. ^ "r/TheMysteriousSong - 🚨🚨🚨 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***) 🚨🚨🚨". reddit.
  8. ^ "r/TheMysteriousSong - 🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: PAUL BASKERVILLE LIKELY DID *NOT* PLAY THE SONG 🚨🚨🚨". reddit.

Sources

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