Dubbed “the most mysterious song on the internet”, a German pop song has finally been identified after 17 years of searching by an army of online enthusiasts, several media outlets reported.
The title was eventually recognized as “Subways of Your Mind”from the group FEX, a little-known German band from the 1980s.
And this, thanks to a user of the social network Reddit who found one of the former members of the group, Der Spiegel and other German media reported this week.
A song from 20 years ago
The mystery began in 2007, when a German brother and sister digitized and posted online a track that the former had originally recorded on cassette, from the radio, more than 20 years earlier.
Music fans who love “lostwave”the search for the origins of songs that have fallen into oblivion, then attempt to identify the piece in different ways, for example by trying to determine the instruments or the accent of the singer.
Early attempts to identify the song, classified by many as belonging to the genre “new wave”are largely unsuccessful.
In 2019, the Reddit platform rebroadcast the song which unleashed enthusiasts, and was quickly nicknamed “the most mysterious song on the internet”.
User “marijn1412” found the group
The dedicated Reddit forum attracts tens of thousands of Internet users, with German media in turn taking an interest in this hunt.
This week, a user, “marijn1412”explained that he reached the goal by talking with one of the former members of FEX, who revealed to him the name of the much sought-after title.
The sleuth found Michael Haedrich, now 68, while searching for groups that had participated in a concert organized by a public broadcaster in northern Germany in the 1980s.
Michael Haedrich told Spiegel that he was never aware of the “hunting” online and the group was “absolutely overwhelmed” by this late recognition.
