A song that has long been called the “Most Mysterious Song on the Internet” has finally been identified. The track in question has been around since at least the 1980s and has circulated the web since 2007, but nobody has been able to unmask its name or origin—until now.
404 Media reports that the song in question is thought to have originated via a radio station in Germany. In 1984, someone recorded the song off the radio there. 404 writes that it is “generally accepted that NDR1 was the radio station and the program was Musik Für Junge Leute or “Music for Young People.”
For reference, the song sounds like this:
Then, in 2007, the sister of the person who recorded the song uploaded it to several different internet forums, hoping someone could identify it. Unfortunately, nobody did.
Fast forward 12 years: the song is shared on Reddit for the first time. 404 writes that a Redditor called “gabgaskins” posted the song in “44 different music subreddits.” It subsequently became known as r/TheMysteriousSong. It set off a years-long hunt for information about the track.
Well, it turns out we finally know the name of this mysterious anthem. The track’s name is “Subways Of the Mind,” and it is performed by a band known as FEX.
How do we know this?
A Redditor called “marijn1412” seems to have put the pivotal puzzle pieces together. Marijn1412 said that they somehow came across an old newspaper article from a German newspaper, Nordwest Zeitung, that mentioned the band behind the song.
“The article was about a band called FEX from Kiel, who won a talent contest in Bremen in [September] 1984 and their music was described as Rock with Wave and Pop influences,” marijn1412 wrote on the /r/TMS subreddit. “It also mentioned their members and one of them I [recognized] from a Hörfest 83 band called Phret.” 404 Media reports the name of that band member is Michael Hädrich. “I managed to get in touch with him and asked him if he still had some old material from those bands. He then sent me some of the songs he made with FEX and Phret… and lo and behold, one of them was titled Subways Of Your Mind,” marijn1412 wrote.
There you have it. Another internet mystery was solved. A full version of the song has been uploaded to the web via the music platform Vocaroo. You can listen to it here. As ever, it’s quite the banger.
