Why can nobody recognise this lost 1980s song?

A mysterious song snippet has been making the rounds online. Nobody seems to recognise the track or its origin. What gives?

Despite the internet’s best efforts, it seems nobody can identify a mysterious 17 second song snippet that was uploaded to WatZatSong by a user called Carl92 in 2021.

The ongoing effort to track down the artist and identify the song name has been extensive, with various niche 80s artists being contacted and even a dedicated subreddit that boasts over 30,000 users.

At present, the song has a few unofficial names, with the two most popular ones being ‘Everyone Knows That’ and ‘Ulterior Motives.’

The snippet itself is a fuzzy, lo-fi recording that seems to incorporate poppy synths and industry-standard hand claps that were commonplace during the 1980s. The audio quality is so muddied that it’s hard to discern most of the lyrics and whether the vocalist is male or female, which only adds to the intrigue.

So, where did the snippet come from? When it was first posted, Carl92 explained that they didn’t ‘remember its origin’ and that it was found ‘between a bunch of very old files in a DVD backup’.

Usually, once an investigation begins online, it takes mere days or even hours for the collective minds of the internet to track down any piece of media, no matter how obscure. In this case however, even with the help of Reddit, everyone remains stumped.

This mystery has caught people’s imaginations, with some commentors on YouTube labelling the snippet as feeling ‘creepy’ due to a lack of context, credits, or origin.

It certainly sounds like something that would have been popular during the 1980s, and has a commercial feel that suggests it was at least intended to be played on television or radio at some point.

The theories are, as you’d expect, wide-ranging and plentiful.

It’s possible that the track is an uncredited and unreleased demo, recorded by a small band hoping to sell it to a major label.

In the pre-internet age, creating low-budget recordings of songs and playing tons of live shows was the only real way to be ‘picked up’ by a talent scout. There are likely many tracks by unknown bands that have been left behind on discarded tapes and CDs in this way.

Another theory is that it might never have intended to be a full song in the first place.

Speaking to The Guardian, one of the song’s subreddit moderators Bas believes it could have been a jingle written specifically for a US film or advert that was recorded from a VHS tape.

Wherever it might have come from, the community surrounding the song has enjoyed a flood of renewed attention as the snippet makes waves across TikTok. One Reddit user, No_Appeal9381, has even recreated the track using modern production software.

You can give it a listen here.

So far, the only real, tangible piece of information we have is that the drum machine and synths have been identified as either LinnDrum or Yamaha DX7, which would mean the song must have released some time after 1983.

Of course, there is a possibility that the track is faked, perhaps using AI or simply made by Carl92 himself as a wild goose chase.

If the snippet had first surfaced today this might have been a more credible and likely possibility, but given it was first uploaded in 2021, before AI had really taken off, it makes it more possible that it’s real. Either way, the investigatory hunt is compelling.