Something I’ve always been was the one who went against the grain and was always weird and obscure throughout my life, and nothing interests me more than obscurity in technology like computers and forgotten consoles, but the most obscure thing is usually music. Music in the modern era has been a primary thing we always listen to on a daily basis, really since the Sony Walkman was released in 1979, we could finally bring albums and our own mixtapes on the go with a friend or two and even on the road on the way to the mall or the beach, and music has always been ingrained in culture and society in some way. But sometimes, songs get lost in time, never released, or are completely lost in mystery, with no one knowing who wrote it, who the band is, or even anything about the band members who contributed to the making of the music. Now even though I love Vaporwave and it’s possibly the most obscure music genre to exist that isn’t Noise Punk, No Wave or just general Noise, but nothing is more obscure than a song no one knows the name to. But what if the band was unknown, the people who published the song are unknown, the song isn’t copyrighted, the song’s lyrics are somewhat unintelligible, and doesn’t have an official title?
This is easily one of the biggest internet mysteries that are on the level of the Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion incident that happened in 1987, and this song is easily the biggest music mystery on the internet.
This is the curious case of The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet. Also known unofficially as: Like The Wind.
The 1980s was an explosion period of culture and progressing technology especially since the radio was actually still relevant in the 80s, actually being far more relevant during this time with the explosion of so many genres to exist like Punk, Prog Rock, Hair Rock/Hair Metal, Thrash Metal, Grunge… unfortunately, and a genre that would actually be somewhat of the opposite of Punk, New Wave, which is the genre of the song we’re talking about today. The radio was the main way to get yourself some sort of exposure for your band if you were an up and coming band from the underground, and if your song got on the radio, you pretty much were gonna get somewhere from it. However, it was a bit different in Europe, specifically in Germany, where this song was originally aired for the first time.
Germany was in really bad shape in the 80s as the Cold War was still going on and a divided Germany still existed, with Berlin still in severe division with the Berlin Wall still up and running, and tensions were really high in the 80s. Luckily this story starts in Hamburg in West Germany, so no sadness from this. The largest radio station in Hamburg was and still is known as Norddeutscher Rundfunk or in English, Northern German Broadcasting but we will go with the official abbreviation of NDR. The NDR is easily the largest radio station in Hamburg, and it’s a member of the ARD, which if you’re wondering what ARD stands for, strap in, because this name is longer than the I-95 highway. The ARD stands for: Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland or in English, The Working group of public broadcasters of the Federal Republic of Germany.
It’s about time one of my articles has a bit of filler, and the one time where I might have to ask Dr. Steven Landser, one of the writers of AAOG, why German words are so long. Also this is your German lesson folks.
In 1981, NDR had a program called “Musik für junge Leute” or in English, Music for Young People, and the host of the show was a Manchester man called Paul Baskerville, and unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information on this radio program but from YouTube videos like the two from YouTuber, Justin Whang who has been keeping a close eye on any progressing mystery on the internet, as well as a dedicated group of people on Reddit have been on the hunt to find out the whereabouts of this song.
Here are the links to both of Justin’s videos he’s made on this mystery, as he has a lot more detail to this mystery, and my inspiration to make this article came from these two videos.
Video 1
Video 2
I stumbled across this mystery after I had a sudden flashback of a bass that I’ve been wanting since I was 16, and it was one of the first instances that my music teacher realized that I had a very creative mind that probably didn’t have limits. This bass was the Ibanez SRKP4 and after seeing a few videos of people demoing the bass, there was this man who had this bass, and was covering a song called “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet” and I was intrigued, and low and behold, I fell into a rabbit hole that keeps me up at night. After discovering this song, and also finding a version of “Pumped Up Kicks” where the guitar and whistling was a bit more prominent and the pitch was shifted down three semitones to the point it sounded like a Gorillaz song, the next thing in my recommendation was just theories up the wazoo about this song, specifically from Justin Whang. And in case you were curious, which at this point you’ve made it this far in the article, what the song sounds like, I will now provide two links to the song, one that is the original recording of the song from the German radio station when it played, and the second that is a full remaster of the song.
Original
Remastered
Words really can’t describe how much of a mystery this song truly is, and it doesn’t help much that this song has a somewhat eerie feeling to it, to the point that it sounds like a song playing to the end credits of a movie that had a shocking end to it leaving you to wonder what the actual hell happened as this song plays while the credits roll. Unsurprisingly, the comment section in the original video has been a gold mine of theories and jokes about the song, most notably the pinned comment saying “When the internet dies, this will be in the credits” or another comment saying this is something you’d hear from a post-apocalyptic world. I want this song in the next Fallout game now, and I want it when Fallout is actually decent.
This is a mystery for the ages and this is a mystery that makes me foam at the mouth because I want to know who was behind this song, especially since this song has been actively sought upon since 2006 and it hasn’t been solved since, with the fact that it’s been unknown for as long as nearly 40 years and while the internet has scratched the surface on the investigation of this song, it’s gonna be a long time until we finally solve this case. At this rate, we don’t know what the circumstances are as multiple theories have been thrown around like the Mandela Effect, where people have heard the song before, but don’t know who the band is or who wrote it or what the title song is, the parallel universe theory where the radio waves of a parallel universe got mixed with ours and that song aired or the song exists in another universe where it’s a very well known song, but in our universe, the song is completely unknown or similar to The Beatles still existing in another universe where Lennon and George Harrison didn’t die and the band were still together and had an album called Everyday Chemistry, this, however, has debunkings, but I’ll leave that up for debate as that’s something I’m not 100% sure of, and the last theory is that this is what Area 51 is hiding from us, which is interesting timing since the raid happened in September, and the full song was finally discovered and released onto YouTube two months before the raid. That could be a possibility.
Internet mysteries will forever be a thing we have to deal with one way or another, but when there’s a mystery that’s music-related and literally nothing is known about the song, you can’t help but want to contribute something to solve this mystery or just hope that it gets solved soon. Most mysteries are solved, while some will never be solved for as long as we live, but these are the mysteries we shouldn’t give up on because if we give up, like the wind, it’ll be gone like there’s no tomorrow. So for the people who are searching for the answers to this mystery, don’t give up, or the sun won’t ever shine.
