For the final 17 years, a worldwide military of on-line sleuths obsessively tried to determine the title of what has been dubbed “essentially the most mysterious track on the web.”
Now, they’ve the reply after an opportunity discovery by one intrepid researcher who triumphantly reported his breakthrough on on-line discussion board Reddit: it’s referred to as “Subways of Your Thoughts” and was recorded by a little-known Nineteen Eighties German band referred to as FEX.
The previous band members are “completely overwhelmed” by the information, 68-year-old Michael Haedrich, who performed keyboard and guitar and sang back-up vocals for FEX, advised Der Spiegel journal.
The band had been oblivious to the web phenomenon, he admitted.
How the thriller unfolded
The thriller started in 2007, when a German brother and sister uploaded a observe on-line that they’d digitized after initially recording it as youngsters on a cassette from the radio. As Rolling Stone reported in 2019, the tape largely featured songs from standard bands like XTC and The Remedy, in addition to one specific track that remained a thriller — till now.
The German siblings requested for assist to determine it and audiophiles quickly took up the problem.
The observe didn’t present up in any music databases, however on-line sleuths tried to work out what devices may very well be heard and analyzed the lead singer’s accent.
Preliminary makes an attempt to determine the track, quickly categorized by many as being within the Nineteen Eighties’ “New Wave” style, yielded little.
It was solely when the observe was uploaded onto Reddit in 2019 that international curiosity exploded.
A Reddit subforum referred to as “r/TheMysteriousSong” attracted tens of 1000’s of members, and the hunt was reported on in German media and past.
The massive breakthrough lastly got here earlier this week when a person referred to as “marijn1412” stated he had recognized the track as “Subways of Your Thoughts.”
He stated he got here throughout former FEX members whereas researching an occasion for up-and-coming bands that had been organized within the Nineteen Eighties by a public broadcaster in northern Germany.
The Reddit person wrote that he had reached out to members of what was a four-piece outfit from the northern metropolis of Kiel, who despatched him a model of the thriller track, and revealed its long-sought-after identify.
Marijn1412 wrote: “After I emailed him again that the track is definitely fairly a well-known ‘misplaced track,’ he requested me to not go public with it till he spoke together with his previous band members. Within the meantime, although, the track did get registered at [the German performance rights organization] GEMA and folks discovered about it. However I am completely satisfied to say that the band members agreed for me to go public with it.”
Haedrich, who continues to be a musician, advised Spiegel that it was the primary time he had heard in regards to the large search effort.
“I believed it was wonderful that somebody was inquisitive about music by a band that was solely profitable regionally, if in any respect, and that was over 40 years in the past,” he stated.
Haedrich, who lives in Munich, stated the band members now need to reissue “Subways of Your Thoughts” and try to trace down the unique recording of the track.
Their success might have been many years within the making, however he stated “for us, it has simply come all of a sudden.”