Here’s another mystery song from the past. Can you identify it? No one else can. Yet.

I love these mysteries. Let’s begin with the email that arrived from Marisa on Sunday.

I am writing this email to you in hopes that you might have some knowledge regarding a peculiar ‘1970s song that has left a decent chunk of the Internet baffled as to the identity of it.

The song’s existence was largely unknown until Reddit and Steve Hoffman forums picked it up from an old, inactive thread. Many users have spent countless hours searching for any information regarding this mysterious song – whether it be looking through Discogs entries, re-uploading the song, or contacting different producers and studios but to no avail.

Here is the link to the song.

This small portion of the song was taped off the radio from a Chicago, IL radio station back in the ’70s. The outro sequence/coda is all that is left of the song, unfortunately. According to the original poster of the song, it is only a small portion of what was once a full-length-song that possibly was broadcasted on WBBM-FM.

The next most-likely source would be WXRT, also in Chicago. Concerning WXRT, the song was already forwarded to the station’s marketing director, who in return shared the song amongst his colleagues. Terri Hemmert, a popular radio personality, was also contacted about the song in the past. Sadly, she could not identify it.

According to the original uploader, he would tape his favourite songs off the radio as a teenager. Sometimes, he would catch the full-song. He believes that in this case, as he was listening to the song, he realized that the track was catchy. Unfortunately, he only managed to hit the record button in time to catch the last 50-seconds of the song.

• The genre is probably soft-rock or folk-rock.
• The OP is not sure if it is from a regional or a national band.
• He doubts this was Christian-rock. He would not have recorded it if that was the case.
• The original uploader also heavily doubts this was part of a commercial or station jingle; he was very particular about which songs he would record off the radio. He would not have recorded the song if it was part of a commercial.
• The most widely accepted lyrics are: “Some are part of laughing, and sometimes part of crying. We are part of it all. I keep looking for that sunset I don’t know when it will be”. Due to the song being of such low-quality, those lyrics could be a little off. Despite the low quality of the only snippet we have, it seems like the song’s sound is full, tight, and a very particular arrangement and production style.

It would truly mean a lot to us to be able to listen to the full version of the song, and would also mean a lot to the original poster of the song who was looking for it for over 40+ years, now! My question to you is – do you know of anybody who would know who made this song, or if anybody could be of assistance, it would be of great value and help to our search.

I appreciate any assistance you can offer in this regard.

–Marisa

I don’t know the song, but there are aspects of it that are familiar.

• It’s definitely 70s AM pop. My guess is it dates to somewhere between 1970 and 1974, an era which saw the rise of both soft rock and country rock.
• The style is similar in sound and production to the Grassroots’ “Midnight Confessions,” which was released in 1972. There’s also a George Harrison influence in the guitar. And damn, the guy does sound a lot like James Taylor (but it’s not).
• Another listen made me think of “Wildfire” by Michael Martin Murphey (released February 1975). Is that a clue?
• The source of the above sample was a homemade mixtape recorded from the radio. The other songs on the tape are listed in the comments here.
• Given the audio quality and the heavy compression on the recording, I’d expect the song was played on AM radio. If we’re talking Chicago, the recording was made off either WLS-AM or WCFL-AM.
• It certainly wasn’t a big Billboard hit, if at all. That makes me think it might have been (a) a local record or (b) what radio calls a “feature play,” which is when a station will spin a song a couple of times to gauge reaction before adding it to the playlist.
• Don’t bother with Shazam. I tried already.
• The fact that it hasn’t been flagged by YouTube’s algorithms also suggests that it’s a completely orphaned song.

I love these sorts of mysteries. Think we can solve it?

Featured Image by Pat Loika, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons