Song of the Day 3/10: The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet
You can discover anything on the internet, just about. That’s why the online world’s inability to discover the name of this song or the musicians who recorded it makes it The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet.
This much is known with 99% certainty: The synth-pop tune was recorded in 1984 by a young teen from a radio broadcast in Hamburg, Germany. He compiled a score of songs to a mixtape, a very 1984 thing to do, and in doing so cut off the DJ intros to the songs. Many were hits of the day, but others were taped from programs spotlighting new music and remained obscure. Twenty years later he got a web site and posted excerpts of the tracks he couldn’t identify, eventually learning the names of all but this one.
His older sister later expanded the search, which led to a raft of theories, arguments and dead ends. Many of the lyrics are hard to make out because the vocals are buried and the singer seems to have a European accent, leading to suggested titles of “Like the Wind” and “Blind the Wind,” or “Check It In, Check It Out.” Internet sleuths determined the song was broadcast by a particular radio station, NDR, but its play logs turned up no clues. A couple of people claimed to have been involved in recording it, but their claims are dubious.
The search exploded in 2019, when the DJ thought to have played it back in 1984, Paul Baskerville, aired it again on NDR. He had no memory of the song from 35 years before, but the new broadcast brought lots of interest. Someone posted a full version of the song on Reddit after the sister found the original mixtape, leading to millions of words of discussion, but nothing definitive has been established since.
The song itself is typical of the gloomy strain of New Wave that was especially popular in Britain, which is one reason it’s gone unidentified so long – if it were more distinctive it would have gotten more airplay in the first place.
Lots of people have released cleaned-up versions like this one on YouTube.
