It is still unbelievable that people worldwide, connected by the internet, had the perseverance and commitment to search for a single song for 17 years. It is even more astonishing that they succeeded in identifying a song created in the 1980s, long before the internet and without current tools that make identifying tracks easy today. The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet (short: TMMS or TMS) managed to captivate and touch so many people that they remained committed to finally finding Subways of Your Mind by FEX.
Looking back at the history of the search, it is amazing how it was defined by coincidences. Recreating the history or timeline of the search is rather complicated as it was quite uncoordinated. This is only natural for an internet phenomenon that captures the attention of many people at different times. New searchers are always joining and may follow leads that have already been ruled out. In this article, only a small overview of the overall effort is presented.
Where The Most Mysterious Song Story began
The original search began in 2007 when song snippets were uploaded to platforms like spiritofradio.ca. However, these initial efforts received little attention and led nowhere. The original poster became inactive, but the search did not. The song received particular attention in the Spanish-speaking part of the internet, for example through a re-upload of a snippet of the song “misteriosa” on YouTube by Redoalfo, a Spanish music collector. This eventually caught the attention of the Spanish label Dead Wax Records, an independent label specializing in obscure 1980s music. However, even the label’s small but dedicated reach among collectors and music enthusiasts failed to uncover the song’s origins. Yet, the story and the song captivated a teenager from Brazil: Gabriel da Silva Viera, who collaborated with Dead Wax Records and was friends with the label owner, Nicolás Zúñiga.
Renewed Interest and Community Efforts
The search gained renewed momentum in 2019 when Gabriel Viera, known online as gabgaskins, discovered the song and started posting about it on Reddit. He even created a dedicated subreddit r/TheMysteriousSong, sparking a new wave of interest. YouTuber Whang contributed to this resurgence with a series of videos exploring the developments. Potential titles for the song, such as „Like the Wind“, “Blind the Wind” or „Check it in, Check it out,“ were suggested, but the lyrics remained difficult to decipher.
Gabriel’s efforts connected him with johnnymetoo, a participant in the original search who still had the complete song. Gabriel quickly uploaded the entire track to YouTube, titling it „The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet„. The video garnered millions of views, significantly amplifying the search efforts.
The First Breakthrough
People eventually discovered that the first upload of the song was made by „bluuue,“ who stated it was likely recorded off a German radio station between 1982 and 1984. Other old uploads on different websites indicated that bluuue’s real identity was Anton from Bremen and that the song was likely recorded from NDR1/NDR2 broadcast. That was all the information available, so where could the search go from there?
The Role of Darius and Lydia
By chance, the original person looking for the song was found. The online search had grown so large that the song was played again on the radio, and the broadcast was heard by someone named Darius. Darius was a teenager in the 1980s and collected music by recording from the radio. He listened to broadcasts such as „Musik für Junge Leute“ (music for young people) moderated by Paul Baskerville who eventually became aware of the search and helped bringing attention to the phenomenon. In the 80ies, Darius meticulously recorded the songs he liked from the broadcasts on tapes. When his tapes began losing quality, he wanted to digitize his songs but realized he often didn’t even know the artist or song title. Thus, his search began.
When his search remained fruitless, Darius asked his sister Lydia for help. She started uploading snippets to different platforms in 2007, using the aliases bluuue and Anton to stay anonymous. The surprise that the exact song Darius was looking for was played on the radio was immense; he could not believe it at first. When Lydia proved to the internet community that she was indeed bluuue/Anton, the search gained new momentum.
Narrowing Down the Timeline
Determining the song’s creation period was crucial for finding its creators. For a long time, Darius was convinced he had recorded the song in 1982 from the radio. However, this turned out to be impossible. Upon analysing the instruments, the searchers found that the synthesizer used was the Yamaha DX7, released in May 1983. With contributions from Reddit user completed-circuit1 together with Homaz_69, the searchers even found the exact patch used: ROM 2, Bank B, Patch 4 „Syn-lead 5.“ This discovery made it impossible for the song to have been played on the radio in 1982.
Additionally, the frequency spectrum of the Mysterious Song was analyzed. A specific spectral line was missing from the recording, revealing a 10 kHz dip. In the spectrogram—which maps the intensity of frequencies over time – this weak frequency appeared as a line. The Reddit user Fliere then pointed out to the searchers that this 10 kHz line was a known characteristic of NDR broadcasts from the 1980s. Other radio stations Darius frequently listened to, such as Bremen 4, did not exhibit this 10 kHz line.
This discovery made NDR the most likely candidate. Later, it was revealed that the broadcast area of NDR2 had changed, and after October 1, 1984, Darius and Lydia could no longer receive NDR2, which played Musik für Junge Leute. Combined with the keyboard analysis, this creates a fairly narrow timeline: The song must have been recorded after mid-1983 and most likely broadcasted before October 1984.
The NDR Protocols
Over time, Darius and Lydia found even more tapes in their collection containing the same recording. The original BASF Chromdioxid II 90 cassette held the first recording of the Mysterious Song, and with Darius and Lydia’s appearance, the other tracks on the tapes also became known. NDR, the top candidate based on the spectral analysis, was contacted to obtain the logs of the shows from that era—and indeed, NDR eventually provided access to the old protocols. New hope ignited: they might finally find the broadcast in which the Mysterious Song had been played!
However, this proved more difficult than expected, as not all the songs on Darius’s cassettes were in chronological order. After recording from the radio, Darius had condensed the tapes afterward. Songs he didn’t like or later acquired on vinyl were simply removed, and others were shifted forward. The searchers combed through every protocol they could get their hands on, identified the songs from Darius’s cassettes, and created a list to sort out when and where each song had been played. In the end, the list contained over 22,000 entries. But “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet” remained unidentified.
False Leads and Music Discoveries
During the search, different artists were contacted, believed to be, or even claimed to be the creators of the Most Mysterious Song. The wrongful claimants caused confusion and uncertainty during the search and will not receive any more attention in this article.
Noteworthy are the other bands and their songs that accompanied the searchers during the long time. Most prominent is the Greek new-wave band Statues in Motion with band member George Dalambiras, aka Alvin Dean. Unfortunately, he has passed, but there are hopes his self-produced work will be released posthumously.
Over time, the community established sound-alike songs such as Deo – Exakt Neutral, The Cave – Remain in Dark, The Orange Cardigan – Living in a Haunted House, Sad Lovers & Giants – 3 Lines, The Ride – Strip Me Naked, Sinking Ships – Strangers, and Marcie’s Still Waiting – A Mysterious Song, among many others.
Bands that were played around the same time as the Most Mysterious Song was played on NDR include The Catch, Farmer’s Boys, The Wirtschaftswunder, Der Radierer, The Police, Rufus & Chaka Khan, Violent Femmes, George Clinton, The Damned, Captain Sensible, and Bush Tetras. More music from the subreddit can be found for example in these posts: 1,2,3.
The HörQuest: Amateur Band Contests and the Hörfest Documents Team
The community started looking into amateur band contests, sparked by the NDR protocols. On Sept 17th 1984 only “Amateur Band” was noted down without any more information. This might mean either amateur bands or tapes were played during that broadcast. Since the song did not appear in any protocols, it could have been played during such a segment. These songs were usually not registered with GEMA (society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights in Germany), so there was no need for the radio shows to list them in their protocols.
One of the most prominent contests for amateur bands at that time was the Hörfest in Hamburg, which started in 1983. However, no digital information was available. The searchers found entries for the years 1983-1985 in the Hamburg archives, but to access the files, someone had to physically visit the archives and digitize everything available by hand. Of course, the search also overcame this obstacle. But now the community was left with 1,000 pages and hundreds of leads with bands that had applied, participated, and won.
A „Hörfest Documents Team“ was formed by the Reddit community, including users purpledogwithspats, LordElend, marijn1412, probablydoesntexist, Successful-Bread-347, johnnymetoo, and stembe17 to systematically work through the immense amount of data. This search phase was also termed the „HörQuest„. All the effort seemed never ending.
The Breakthrough
This changed when Marijn (marijn1412) started looking through newspaper archives and found an article about a band and their studio recording session in November 1984. „The article was about a band called FEX from Kiel, who won a talent contest in Bremen in September 1984, and their music was described as rock with wave and pop influences“. Marijn recognized one of the band members named Michael Hädrich. Michael’s name had already appeared in the Hörfest research in the context of another band called Phret. In fact, Phret was a finalist in the Hörfest competition in 1983. However, they were ruled out by the search because their lead singer was a woman and their lyrics were in German, which did not fit with the Mysterious Song that was sung by a man in English.
With the newly found article, Marijn had a new reason to contact Michael, and so he did. Marijn did not tell Michael right away the reason for contacting him. He simply asked Michael for his experiences as a musician in northern Germany during the 80ies. Michael shared some old memories until Marijn asked him for some demos. Michael sent him three songs from the band FEX, the band the article was reporting on.
And lo and behold, a different version of the Mysterious Song was among the demos. Finally, the name of the song people had been looking for 17 years was known: „Subways of Your Mind“. Three songs from the yellow demo tape are released on YouTube: Subways of Your Mind, Heart In Danger and Goldrush together with a live version of Subways recorded at the Roxy in Paderborn on May, 23rd 1985. This concert was part of a small tour that ended at the Bruchhausen Festival 1985. The yellow demo tape was recorded during the studio session mentioned in the article found by Marijn.
Reunion and New Releases
Michael (keyboards) contacted his old band members: singer Ture Rückwardt and bassist Norbert Ziermann. Together they played Subways of Your Mind acoustic live on NDR. During an interview, they got the chance to talk to Lydia and played the song again just for her. NDR managed to find drummer Hans Reimer-Sievers, who immediately rejoined the band but had to leave shortly after for family reasons.
In Michael’s tape collection, new tapes and recordings from FEX were found, including the same version of Subways of Your Mind as Darius recorded from the radio, with only a slightly different fade-out. When recording the song from the master, the fade-out was manually added to each tape individually, resulting in slightly different versions.
More songs were discovered, which finally resulted in an entire album called Skyscraper – Waves from the Past, released in July 2025. A special edition bonus LP, „More Waves from the Past“, includes even more songs. Songs such as Persecution Mania and Promise, featuring ex-member Ilona Rückwardt, who originally gave FEX its name, are released on YouTube.
The Band’s Newfound Fame
While the newfound fame came unexpectedly to the band members, they are very happy and enthusiastic about continuing to make music. All three of them never stopped playing their instruments. Ture and Norbert work at the theatre in Kiel, and Michael has his own private recording studio, working on his own projects like SilkVision. Currently, FEX is working on re-recording old and new songs, and their fans are looking forward to new releases. The band is trying to keep their fans posted over social media. Moreover, many media outlets have reported on the search; Ture, the songwriter of the mysterious song recently gave an interview with German newspaper taz.
Notably, one of the most active searchers, Successful-Bread-347, published a book offering a well-documented insight into the investigation. On Reddit, Rees (reesjudoka) recently announced his documentary about the search made in collaboration with ARD Kultur and NDR Germany, which will be available on streaming this October.
Remaining Mysteries
The journey of finding „The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet“ lasted 17 years and successfully identified the name and creators. However, some small mysteries remain. It is still unclear when the song was recorded by the band and when it was played on the radio. The search managed to narrow down a likely airdate to either September 3rd or 4th, 1984. This was found by Marijn’s analysis of Darius’s tapes. The songs on the tapes exhibit a phase shift caused by the recorder. The songs with a similar phase shift to Subways of Your Mind were found in the NDR protocols on either September 3rd or 4th, 1984.
The largest mystery unsolved so far is how exactly the tape ended up with the NDR. The band members of FEX do not remember sending it to the radio, and neither do their sound engineer or agents at that time. In fact, the band was unaware that one of their songs had been played on the radio over 40 years ago until they were contacted by the searchers. Despite the immense effort of the internet community, these mysteries remain to be solved.
In summary, the internet’s efforts and the achievement of identifying the Mysterious Song are truly impressive. The great mystery has been solved, but fortunately, there are still smaller mysteries left to unravel.
About the Author
As the daughter of FEX’s keyboardist, I experienced the band’s discovery firsthand. Under my Reddit username Comfortable_Glow, I quickly reached out to the online community and have since been helping the band reconstruct their own history and the story of the search. Above all, I am excited to learn more about the music my father contributed to—tracks that had long been gathering dust in boxes.
Comfortable Glow
Als Tochter des FEX-Keyboarders hat Glow die Entdeckung der Band hautnah miterlebt. Unter dem Reddit-Namen Comfortable_Glow nahm sie schnell Kontakt zur Community auf und unterstützt die Band seitdem dabei, ihre eigene Geschichte sowie die der Suche aufzuarbeiten.