Lostwave is a term for music with little to no information available about their origins, including song titles, names of associated musicians, and recording and release dates. Lostwave songs have been the subject of online crowdsourced efforts to uncover their origins.^[1]

Lostwave originated mainly from the search for "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet", recorded from the German radio station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) in the mid-1980s, likely in or after 1984, by Darius S. In 2007, Darius' sister, Lydia H., uploaded the song to best-of-80s.de and The Spirit of Radio, sparking widespread interest across various Internet forums.^[2][3] In 2024, the song was identified as "Subways of Your Mind" by German new wave band FEX.

With other examples of lostwave appearing online, a Reddit community of the same name was created in 2019^[4] to distinguish it from the search for "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" and bring more attention to the topic. This was the first usage of the term 'lostwave', which uses the same naming format as similar microgenres, such as vaporwave and chillwave.^[1]

"Spelling on the Stone" is a single recorded by an Elvis impersonator and released in 1988 by LS Records with no credited artist, which peaked at number 82 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.^[5] The song is from the perspective of Elvis Presley and alludes to speculation that he faked his death. Music historians have speculated that Dan Willis, who recorded with LS Records, was the vocalist, but this is unconfirmed.

"On the Roof" is a song by Swedish ex musician Johan Lindell, under the name "Stay (The Second Time Around)". It remained unidentified until 2013 when a listener of Swedish radio show PP3, played the song in hopes that others would recognize it.^[6] Lindell had since abandoned music to pursue a career in painting, and was unaware of the search.^[7][8]

"How Long (Will It Take)" is a song by Canadian musician Paula Toledo that was licensed for use in the TV film Secret Lives and the series 15/Love.^[9] Snippets from the song were used on the menus of two Russian bootleg DVDs containing multiple movies each. The search for the song began when it was posted to a Ukrainian message board in August 2007, where it became known as "How Long Will It Take".^[10] In December 2023, user the-arabara found the song after searching the database of Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada.^[11] After Toledo learned of the search from her song, she uploaded it to Bandcamp and other streaming services, with the funds from the Bandcamp page being donated to the Music Heals Charitable Foundation.^[9] Soon after, fake versions of the song began to appear on streaming services, which she suspected to be streaming fraud.^[12]

"Ammunition" is the third track from the 1994 album Fetish Fetish by Canadian alternative rock band All Good Children. The song was recorded in 1993 from a Hamilton, Ontario radio broadcast by Robin and Erin Hanson, who compared the song to U2.^[13] The song remained unidentified until late 2015, when it was identified after being broadcast on CBC Radio One to bring attention to the search.^[14]

"Subways of Your Mind" was recorded by teenager Darius S. from a radio program that aired on the West German public radio station Norddeutscher Rundfunk.^[2][15] The song was recorded to a cassette tape, which also included other songs by the bands XTC and the Cure. To get a clean copy of the songs, the DJ chatter was removed, which is possibly why the song's exact airplay date is unknown.^[16]

The song was first posted online between 2004 and 2007, but the search for it did not gain traction until 2019, when Brazilian teenager Gabriel da Silva Vieira learned of it from Nicolás Zúñiga of Spanish independent record label Dead Wax Records. He uploaded the excerpt of the song to YouTube and several music-related Reddit communities, eventually founding r/TheMysteriousSong.^[17]

On 27 May 2019, Australian music news website Tone Deaf wrote the earliest article focusing on the song, with author Tyler Jenke discussing the preliminary stages of the search and noting its similarities to the 2013 search for a song eventually identified as "On the Roof" by Swedish musician Johan Lindell.^[18][8]

Also in 2019, DJ Paul Baskerville was thought to be related to the song, as it was believed to have been taped off of his program Musik für junge Leute ("music for young people").^[19][20][21] He suspects that it was a demo recording that was played once by an NDR presenter and then discarded.^[22]

On 4 November 2024, Reddit user marijn1412 identified the song as "Subways of Your Mind" by the band FEX. A full, higher-quality clip was attached. On November 7, 2024, three members of FEX performed an acoustic version on NDR.^[23][24]

In 2021, WatZatSong user carl92 uploaded a 17-second snippet of a song recorded between 1982 and 1999; he claimed to have found the recording amongst files in a DVD backup, and speculated that it was a leftover from when he was learning to record audio. He also claimed that the snippet was from 1999 and possibly from Spain, where he claimed to live.^[25][26][27] Initially, users referred to the song as "Everyone Knows That" due to the lyrics of the snippet.

The search for the song was initially slow to gain traction, but gained a dedicated following over time.^[27] A subreddit dedicated to finding the song was created, with two of its members being interviewed by French commercial TV network TF1 on 7 January 2024.^[7] Theorized sources for the song included a 1990s MTV broadcast, production music, or a commercial jingle.^[28]

On 28 April 2024, the song was identified as "Ulterior Motives" by Christopher and Philip Booth, from the 1980s pornographic film Angels of Passion.^[29]

• Rare groove
• Lost media
• Search by sound

• r/Lostwave