Subways Of Your Mind

ⓘ This lostwave is classified as unsolved.

Track list for "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet"

The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet (also known as “Like The Wind”, “Blind The Wind”, “Check It In, Check It Out”, “Take It In, Take It Out”, and “The Mysterious Song”) is the name given to a recording of an unidentified song, recorded by Darius S. It was recorded sometime around 1983-1984 from the North German radio station "Norddeutscher Rundfunk," or NDR for short.

Origins and search

Around 1982 to 1984, Darius recorded the song off radio and onto a cassette tape, leaving out DJ chatter, and thus important info, for a cleaner recording. This tape was used for several mixtapes, though the original source tape remains lost.

On March 18, 2007, Darius' sister, Lydia, asked for help, posting the song on the websites best-of-80s.de and Spirit of Radio.

In April of 2011, redalfo uploaded the song to his YouTube channel, with the original title as “Unkonow Song - Cancion Desconocida - Track Id.”

In July, 2017, the song was uploaded to WatZatSong by user azthriller.

In 2019, Gabriel Pelenson started the search in earnest, posting the song to many Song Identification and investigative subreddits, including r/helpmefind, r/rbi, and r/tipofmytongue, as well as creating the r/TheMysteriousSong subreddit. Not long after, on July 12th, u/Johnnymetoo posted a complete version of the song, downloaded from one of Lydia's earlier posts before the post was removed.

On July 9th, 2019, Whang! posted the first of many videos about the song on his Tales from the Internet series.

On July 21, 2019, after requests from the song's researchers, Paul Baskerville played the song on "Nachtclub," his radio program. This alerted Darius and Lydia to the search, with Lydia joining the subreddit and Discord.

However, the song couldn't be identified on playlists for Baskerville's "Music Für Junge Leute," program.

On September 24, 2019, The Rolling Stone's David Browne posts the article "The Unsolved Case of the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet."

In late 2020, one of the researchers discovered that the recording had a 10 kHz line, present on most NDR broadcasts of the time, except Hilversum's broadcasts.

On November 2, 2021, Lydia posted a higher quality copy of the song, found in a box of tapes while she and her son were renovated her apartment.

Key Findings in the Search

Key Milestones:

• Recorded on German Radio: Most likely on NDR Radio in late 1984.
• Initial Search: First questions about the song posted online in 2007 (Usenet)
• Full recording: July 12, 2019 - the full song is re-found and uploaded.
• Original Poster Located: 2019 - the original recorders / posters (Lydia and her brother Darius are located)
• Technical Analysis: A distinct 10 kHz line was found in the song's spectrum, typical for 1980s FM broadcasts from NDR Radio, supporting its origin from that radio station. The line was very recently found to be broadcast at exactly 10khz and differences on the frequency found on the tapes are mostly due to tape copying and wear (this has been helpful in identifying airdates).
• Radio Playlists: Obtaining playlists from NDR radio resulted in hundreds of pages of bands reviewed and narrowed down potential air dates but did not locate the song.
• November 1st, 2021: a higher quality version of the song was found while reviewing tapes and is now on YouTube.
• Possible Air Dates: 2024 - Research points to dates like September 28, November 28, December 2, or September 17, 1984, as to when the song likely aired.
• Current Research: Searching through the Stasi Archives is now underway for any possible recordings or surveillance data to find if East Germany might have recorded or transcribed the broadcast of the song, given their extensive media monitoring during the Cold War era.

TMS Leads

A constantly changing list of categorized leads can be viewed here.

Major Leads

• Artistic Control
• Blue Light
• Christian Brandl
• Ronnie Urini
• Stasi Archives
• Statues in Motion
• Wild Angels

Instruments and Style

• Overall Style
• Voice
• Guitar
• Drums
• Synth

Notes

The synth in the song is a Yamaha DX7, using several presets, like Syn Lead 5. This means the song couldn't have been released any earlier than 1983, at a minimum.

Brandi and Urini have both tried to claim the song, but an associate of theirs says it sounds nothing like them.

Paul Baskerville thinks it could have been a demo that aired on NDR, but was thrown away afterwards.

Miscellaneous

On September 20th 2019, the digitization of cassette tape BASF 4|1 and others was uploaded by the channel plasmalabtv on youtube. Later the videos were uploaded by Lydia (Darius sister) to Reddit on December 24th 2019. The recording session can be found here and it was also uploaded to Google Photos here.