After 40 years, someone has finally identified “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet!”
It’s been called “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet,” although it also goes by the titles “Like the Wind,” “Blind the Wind,” “The Sun Will Never Shine,” and (crucially, as we’ll see), “Subways of Your Mind.” Here’s the backstory.
Sometime in the 1980s (1984, maybe?), a teenager known only as Darius S. from Wilhelmshaven recorded a song from a show called Musik Für Junge Leute (“Music for Young People”) on Norddeutscher Rundfunk (RDR1), a West German radio station in the north of the country. It’s a New Wave-type track that ended up on Darius’s tape (entitled “Cassette 4”) alongside Depeche Mode, XTC, The Cure, Simple Minds, Corey Hart, and others. The recording did not include any mentions or descriptions by the DJ on the air. What was this thing?
A digital snippet first appeared online in the early 2000s by groups of people who also had the recording. In 2007, Lydia (her Reddit name is bluuely), the sister of the guy who first started this search. She also appealed for someone to identify the song, to no avail. Contacting the radio station and (apparently) even the DJ proved useless. People gave up.
The mystery was revived in 2019 when a Brazilian teenager heard about it from a Spanish fan. A snippet was uploaded to YouTube and no fewer than 44 different subreddits. A full version, similarly unlabeled, was eventually uncovered.
A video was made.
The DJ who originally played the track on the air was tracked down, but he was no help.
Over the years, the song circulated through perhaps hundreds of websites. I’ve received dozens of emails about it. Recordings of the song were even spectrum-analyzed in hopes of getting to the bottom of the problem. Let’s have a listen.
No one on planet Earth was able to identify that song. However, there were theories.
The first was that it was a demo sent to the radio station, played once, and then thrown out. Another is that it’s a singer from Vienna named Christian Brandi, along with his partner Ronnie Urini, who recorded both German and English versions. That lead was investigated until it was debunked. A Shazam user says the app returned with the artist result “antwon01,” but that led nowhere. Meanwhile, the song has been covered by multiple bands and has been widely distributed. Yet no one was any closer to figuring out the truth.
Now, though, there’s been a breakthrough.
A few months ago, people at Hörfest, an annual musicians’ gathering in Hamburg. Attendees help compile a list of all the bands who played the festival over the years. Might one of them be the mystery group?
A Redditor named marijin1412 found an old newspaper clipping which told of a band from Kiel called FEX. They won a talent contest staged in Bremen in 1984. Their music was described as “rock with New Wave and Pop influences.”
Marijin1412 then reached out to keyboardist and back-up vocalist Michael Hädrich. He was part of a band called Phret who played Hörfest in 1983. Marijin sent samples of songs by both FEX and Phret, including “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet” under the name “Subways of Your Mind.”
Hädrich was shocked to find out that a FEX song was internet infamous. “Wait. THAT’S FEX! MY OLD BAND!”
He then contacted members of FEX and then registered the song with GEMA, the German version of SOCAN or ASCAP/BMI/SESAC. Another cleaner version (and slightly different from the one being circulated) was uploaded.
So there we have it. “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet” is “Subways of Your Mind” by FEX. Mystery solved.
FEX is now planning a reunion, 40 years after they got that play on West German Radio. For the record, the band features Hädrich, bassist Norbert Ziermann, and guitarist/singer Ture Rückwart. All of them still work in music. And will there be new music from FEX as a result of all this? It looks like it.