Lostwave is an internet term used to describe music and songs lacking any information about the artist, title or origin. The term was coined on Reddit in 2019 when people searching for the identity of The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet made a subreddit dedicated to searching other unknown songs, such as Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives). While the majority of lostwave comes from the pre-internet age, most particularly the 1980s and 1990s, lostwave songs can come from any decade in history. The term is a portmanteau on the words "lost" and "wave" used to describe other genres such as "new wave", "cold wave", and "vaporwave", etc.

Examples

The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet

The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet was recorded by a user named Darius S. He recorded it from a radio program that aired on West German public radio station Norddeutscher Rundfunk.[1][2] The song was recorded onto a cassette tape, which also included other songs by XTC and The Cure. To get a clean copy of all the songs, all the DJ chatter was purposely removed, which is likely the reason the song's exact airplay date and its title are unknown.[3]

The song was first posted to the internet between 2004 and 2007, but did not really pick up much traction at the time. In 2019, questions about the song's origins began to pick up steam when a Brazilian teenager named Gabriel da Silva Vieira began searching for the song's origin, after being informed about it by Nicolás Zúñiga of the Spanish independent record label Dead Wax Records. Gabriel uploaded the excerpt of the song to YouTube and many music-related Reddit communities, and eventually founded r/TheMysteriousSong.[4]

On May 27, 2019, Australian music news website Tone Deaf wrote the earliest article focusing on the song, with author Tyler Jenke discussing the preliminary stages of the search for the track and noting that the search was similar to a 2013 search for a song which was ultimately identified as "On the Roof" by Swedish musician Johan Lindell.[5]

Also in 2019, a DJ by the name of Paul Baskerville was thought to be related to the song. Baskerville's then-program Musik für junge Leute ("music for young people") was once thought to have been the show from which a German teenager taped an unidentified new wave song between 1982 and 1984 that has become a viral internet phenomenon dubbed "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet".[6][7][8] He suspects that it was a demo recording that was played once by an NDR presenter and then thrown away, and Baskerville was later ruled out of the theory.[9]

Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives)

In 2021, a user by the name of carl92 uploaded a grainy, 17 second sample of a song he recorded in 1999 onto the WatZatSong website.[10][11] Since this has been posted, several artists have been floated as being behind the song, such as Roxette (with some users theorizing that their song Good Karma from the Good Karma album in 2016, is a reworking of the song) and Savage Garden and their vocalist Darren Hayes.

The Savage Garden\Darren Hayes theory has picked up much steam in 2023. A YouTuber who dissected this song and that band's 1997 song To the Moon and Back noted vocal similarities, where he went on to suggest this could be a Savage Garden or Darren Hayes demo.[12] On November 17, 2023, Hayes himself added more fuel to the fire by posting a vague tweet titled "Everyone Knows That" with nothing else. This led to increased speculation that he is the vocalist behind the song and that a full reveal could be imminent.[13]

AI has also been floated as being behind the song, however, this was quickly debunked, as when the song snippet was posted in 2021, AI tools such as ChatGPT had yet to reach the general public and would not do so until the following year, and users noted that an AI's attempt to expand the song beyond 17 seconds resulted in the finished product using various samples from already popular songs, making it sound nothing like what's heard in the initial 17 seconds.

On the Roof

On the Roof is a song by Johan Lindell. The identity of this song remained a mystery for several years until 2013, when it was finally identified as being by Lindell, who at that point, had long abandoned music for a career in painting.[5]

Ready 'n' Steady

Ready 'n' Steady is a song by the artists D.A, released in 1979. The song, despite not having any official release as a single or otherwise, debuted on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart by Billboard at number 106. It rose to a peak of 106 before falling off the chart completely.[14] This remains the only case of a song not having any official release as a single or otherwise, appearing on a Billboard chart. The song's existence was in question for many years, but in 2016, it was confirmed to be real. It also debuted on KFAI in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that same year,[15] the only known instance of it being played on radio.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Browne, David (24 September 2019). "The Unsolved Case of the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  2. ↑ Jones, Alexandra Mae (2019-11-18). "Help solve a decades-long mystery: What is the name of this mysterious 80s song?". CTVNews. Archived from the original on 2023-05-24. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  3. ↑ Reeve, Tanja (30 May 2020). "Die Jagd nach dem Most Mysterious Song on the Internet". Braunschweiger Zeitung. Archived from the original on 3 July 2020. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  4. ↑ "This Mysterious Three-Minute Song Has The Internet Baffled". 2 Ocean's Vibe News. 2021-07-29. Archived from the original on 2021-12-26. Retrieved 2021-12-25.
  5. 1 2 Jenke, Tyler (2019-05-27). "Can you help some internet sleuths identify a mysterious song?". Tone Deaf. Archived from the original on 2023-05-31. Retrieved 2023-06-01.
  6. ↑ Knörer, Ekkehard (2019-09-27). "Wer kennt diesen Song?". www.zeit.de. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  7. ↑ "80er-Song lässt User verzweifeln: "Most mysterious song on the internet"? Spuren nach Deutschland". www.rotenburger-rundschau.de (in German). 4 June 2020. Retrieved 2020-08-16.
  8. ↑ Ulrich, Viola (2019-09-11). "Mysteriöser Song: Wer kennt dieses Lied aus den 80er-Jahren?". DIE WELT. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
  9. ↑ "Hamburg Journal: Der geheimnisvolle Song aus dem NDR Archiv | ARD Mediathek". www.ardmediathek.de (in German). Retrieved 2020-12-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. ↑ Klee, Miles (2023-11-12). "Internet Sleuths Want to Track Down This Mystery Pop Song. They Only Have 17 Seconds of It". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
  11. ↑ carl92. "Can you help me name this tune?". WatZatSong. Retrieved 2023-11-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  12. ↑ "[EKT theory] Is Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives) a lost Savage Garden Demo?" – via www.youtube.com.
  13. ↑ https://twitter.com/darrenhayes/status/1725697367461216265
  14. ↑ "Billboard". Nielsen Business Media, Inc. June 30, 1979 – via Google Books.
  15. ↑ "Crap From The Past - July 8, 2016: Paul Haney presents a world premiere of D.A.'s Ready 'N' Steady from 1979!". July 8, 2016 – via Internet Archive.
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