Johnny in the Middle of the Park

Johnny In The Middle Of The Park, formerly known by the placeholder name Johnny or Johnny (The Grass Is Green) is an identfied Yacht Rock song by Piero Cotto from 1983.

Origins and Search

On June 5th 1983, the song was broadcast on television as a credits song for the Italian sports programme "La Domenica Sportiva". It was played over montage footage of a boat race known as "the Formula One of the sea". The track wasn't attributed to any artist in the credits.

On September 18th 2013, the outro with the song would be uploaded to Dailymotion by Nik8888olas in a video of the broadcast called "La Domenica Sportiva - 5 Giugno 1983 - Sigla di chiusura".

In 2020, WatZatSong user MrZSAC would put a snippet of Johnny In The Middle Of The Park on the site on December 15th. They cited the source for the song as Nik8888olas' video. That same day the track would be uploaded to Youtube.

By 2023, the search for the song had grown, so much that Johnny In The Middle Of The Park was featured in Youtuber NAETE's video of The Most Legendary Lost Songs On The Internet.

Debunked Leads

Some searching focused on the channel that broadcast the song: Rai. There were suggestions that they could have bought the track as stock music for a cheap price. RaiPlay's archive on their website didn't include the episode and it was theorized that the episode last aired on TV on a spin off channel called RaiSport, which is where Nik8888olas got the clip. Contacting Rai was a fruitless lead, however, as the company couldn't provide any information about the song.

Several ruled out artists were raised including Enzo Drahgi and Massimo Vita. Vita seemed to be a promising lead as was a somewhat prolific singer in Italy and had a similar vocal tone to the song. After Vita was reached out to, he confirmed he didn't make the song.

Discovery

In 2024, the subreddit for the song proposed Piero Cotto as a possible singer. After being reached out to, Cotto claimed he was behind the song on March 15th and claimed that it was called Johnny In The Middle Of The Park. A copyright entry was discovered for this title but it was only credited to Cotto's producer. Many of Cotto's songs were not directly credited to him through copyright entries, and upon the confirmation he created Johnny In The Middle Of The Park, Cotto's name was added to copyright entries for his songs.