The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet,, is the nickname given to a new wave song most likely composed in the 1980s, whose origin and name are unknown. The song was recorded from a Norddeutscher Rundfunk broadcast at an unknown date. Since 2019, this song has been the subject of a viral Internet phenomenon, with many users of sites such as Reddit and Discord involved in a collaborative effort to search for the origins of the song.
Background
According to a Rolling Stone article in September 2019, a person under the pseudonym "Darius S." recorded the song from a radio program called Musik für junge Leute that he listened to on the German public radio stationNDR in 1984. According to Darius, he recorded the song on a tape labeled "Cassette 4" along with songs from XTC and The Cure that were also released around 1984. Further evidence that supports this as being the earliest possible airing date was the Technics tape deck that he most likely used to record the song on, which was manufactured in 1984 as well. To get clean recordings of songs he purposefully did not include presentations of radio hosts, which is why the air date and the name is unknown. In 2007, the sister of Darius S., posting under the pseudonym "Anton", began posting the song on the Internet in an attempt to identify the artist and title of the song. The woman, who eventually identified herself as "Lydia H.", posted a digital snippet of the song to a German fansite devoted to eighties synth-pop and to , a Canadian website devoted to identifying songs uploaded by fans.
Viral Internet phenomenon
The mystery of the unidentified song gained viral popularity in 2019 when a Brazilian teenager named Gabriel da Silva Vieira began searching for evidence of its origin. He uploaded a clip of the song to YouTube and to many Reddit music subreddits. On July 9, 2019, YouTuber Justin Whang posted an episode of Tales from the Internet discussing the song, and the progress of the search up to that point. Upon the video's release, more Internet users have contributed to the effort to identify the song. So far, three episodes about the song have been made. After the video's release, Reddit user u/johnnymetoo posted a complete clip of the song in July 2019, which he says he obtained from one of Lydia's posts on Usenet in 2007. Since then, many contacts have been made which pertain to the search, such as Paul Baskerville, the DJ of the show from which the song was likely taped, although he has stated that he does not remember the song, and a YouTube channel named "80zforever", which has many videos of obscure music. These contacts and leads are kept in a spreadsheet to keep track of the investigation. The community's official Discord server has also found various undocumented and/or obscure media of various genres. On July 10, 2020, Reddit user u/FlexxonMobil had acquired the complete list of songs Baskerville had played on Music für junge Leute and published it onto the site. However, after some searching, it was concluded that the song was not in that list, effectively ruling out the theory that Baskerville had played the song. u/FlexxonMobil has since contacted NDR archivists for 1983 and 1984 playlists for other DJs, and is currently waiting for a response at the time of writing.
