Break Down Those Walls

Uptown People is an unsolved lostwave from the early 80s. It was posted on Watzatsong by NY80s Tapes in July 2023. The snippet is 22 seconds long but a longer version on Youtube is 26 seconds long.

Origins and Search

Uptown People was posted to Watzatsong by the user NY80s Tapes on the 2nd of July 2023. They said that it sounded like something ABP (a Scottish funk rock band) would make. A longer snippet was subsequently uploaded to Youtube.

In late 2023, the conversation moved to r/lostwave where more information about the song was clarified. User Cynicalcleaning said they had spoken to the OP of the first Youtube upload who placed the song around 1984 in terms of time period. In early 2024, the community received follow-up clarification from NY80s Tapes that the song may have been aired on the WFMU, WDMU or WNYU college radio stations in the New Jersey or New York area.

Current Leads

When the station WFDU was contacted about the song, they said it was likely the song was played on their station as it sounded very familiar. They said they probably wouldn't have the cassette tape for the song anymore, so users decided to contact WFMU. They received a similar response - the song was familiar and sounded like it was from the early 80s but wasn't immediately identifiable.

Current action to take to broaden the search for this song would be trying to find recordings of the three main stations from the time period and listening to them to see if there are similar or identical songs. Another avenue would be definitively ruling out artists mentioned as leads to narrow the search pool down

Outside Links:

Wazatsong Post:

https://www.watzatsong.com/en/name-that-tune/776289.html

Youtube Snippet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbZiwrUNaZg

The first reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lostwave/comments/18d3l3v/1984_unknownunidentified_song_uptown_people_soul/