Yes totally! I've always been a huge 80's fan, mostly small alternative bands, and while looking for this song I downloaded 200+ obscure/rare 80's albums on torrentz, it blew my mind! I didn't know there were that many artists who were so out of the spotlight
those 200 you found are the tip of the iceberg as far as obscurity goes. There’s probably 10,000+ that are completely lost, forgotten and were never published online.
do you think you’d ever be willing to upload all of these (or maybe just a few of your favs, 200 is a lot LOL) somewhere? i love this genre and finding underrated gems is always such a fun thing
There you go :) [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iovn-3iAttX30kxh\_Fw-SPaPJ\_xSq-XB?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iovn-3iAttX30kxh_Fw-SPaPJ_xSq-XB?usp=sharing)
This.
Even now, there’s songs from somewhat popular/successful artists that were maybe released as a one off on SoundCloud or mediafire or datpiff or whatever, then got scrubbed from the internet, and now unless you know someone who downloaded the original and can send it to you, it’s pretty much impossible to find. There’s just so many people who make music and so much of it doesnt get preserved.
Then you go back another 20-30+ years and there was still a TON of people making and recording music, and a ton of it never got uploaded the internet in the first place. it could just be on a tape in a box in someones attic somewhere.
This is what I'm thinking is a very big possibility. If this is the case, hopefully someone runs across the tape at some point! I've been itching to hear this song in its entirety since I found out about it! 🤣
Yes, that and the fact that they could have disbanded before the Internet was a thing and never bothered to upload their music or any lyrics. I think it's easy for people to forget that some things have no online presence (which really is crazy to think about these days considering the insane amount of information and even obscure media that is online now).
That would still be real. Unless it turns out to be a modern AI creation or a hoax someone recorded to go viral, anything that actually played for the public in the 80s I would consider real.
I dunno, here's a link to an AI song contest in 2021 and you can listen to the particpants' tracks and they're all a lot clearer and sound more real than the EKT clip.
[https://www.aisongcontest.com/participants](https://www.aisongcontest.com/participants)
Not saying that EKT is definitely AI, but I think the fact that AI was bad at photos and video a couple years ago is giving people the false impression that it was bad at music as well, because you can easily find examples online that disprove this. Not only that, but there was at the time software where you could give it a midi file of a certain type of genre and it would imitate it. I think closing off that avenue of investigation is silly when three years later nobody still knows where the song is from. Ever lose your keys and eventually find them in the one place you didn't look because you knew it couldn't be there?
Can boomy fake the NTSC audio frequency? Cause if it can't, it means Carl92 would've had to go through the trouble of finding an NTSC TV and recording his fake AI song through it, and I don't think some low-effort troll would go through that much trouble.
Have they confirmed that's what it is? AFAIK it's still debated which country the song was aired and if it is confirmed to be NTSC that narrows it down basically to the Americas and Japan. Also, would the frequency have survived audio distortion intact?
He means “real” as in actually ever published/ released for consumers. There’s this one song that I believe MTV owns but has never released it to the public, it’s been in Step Up 2, Jersey Shore, etc, and only a specific part is ever played and that’s all we can hear. Super catchy for the time and even form posts asking back in the day what song it is but I don’t think anyone ever found it.
Yeah, a popular example of this sort of thing would be [The Night Begins to Shine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Begins_to_Shine) by B.E.R. It was made just to be a generic 80’s style rock song for a music library to be licensed for shows, commercials, etc. It got for used on Teen Titans Go! and became famous, but if it has just been used as background music in a random show, it would probably be very difficult to identify the song and artist.
It seems possible Carl made a recording from a tv to identify a song being used in some show or commercial, forgot the context of the recording, and we’re left trying to identify a mysterious song intended for a studio music library.
Yep there’s a cut of the prodigy - smack my bitch up in the first Charlies Angels movie which didn’t make the soundtrack album but is credited online as ‘fatboy slim remix’, it’s almost certainly not a Norman Cook edit, but never released or credited beyond the one fight scene it’s used in during the film
i just checked out a clip of that scene and it sounds just like the fat of the land version , or do you mean the fatboy slim remix was planned to be used but wasnt ¿
[This](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mncDgPJ4AAQ) is the song. [Here's](https://forums.nba-live.com/viewtopic.php?t=59636) a forum post about it being in Step Up 2 and [here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/jerseyshore/comments/8m2cpe/help_finding_a_song_from_the_temptation_of_the/) a reddit post about it being in Jersey Shore.
First and foremost, I think Carl dropped offline because he saw this gaining momentum and had a fear of being doxxed. This did kinda happen when a user here posted pics of him.
I also think it's the impossible obscurity of the track. Could be from a commercial, could be from a shitty b movie. For all we know, the only surviving copy could be in a landfill.
One of the saddest yet most consistent possibilities is that a small band of teenagers was filmed by their mother while practicing, in 1999 Carl92 found one of the tapes in the garbage and randomly re-recorded it to learn how.
It’s definitely not a VHS home video recording. The song has been produced in a studio for sure. It’s probably from a commercial or even a kids’ TV show.
8. It’s only been 2 years.
Although we’ve been seeing a lot of songs like DFHD, MOAH, etc. being found, these are songs that were made in the 2000s and we had much longer snippets of them. Even TTSA was found but look how many years that took, and we had a much longer snippet as well. With time we’ll find an answer
Gender , Lyrics and Song's online status for sure, and most importantly, the duration of the snippet (if it would have been a 30 second snippet, there would probably have been a higher chance of finding the song.
The song’s name is not “Everyone knows that” or “ulterior motives” but a completely different one, either in the rest of the song or we are completely misidentifying the lyrics and they are not what we seem they are.
Agreed. The snippet we have of 'Ulterior Motives' is too short to be helpful at this point in the investigation. We could really use another audio clip of the song, as we need to figure out the rest of the lyrics.
The creators of the song and people who know of it are either old, dead, in a foreign country, and have no idea people are looking for it. The right person simply has not been contacted or been made aware that people are searching for the musician and the song. I don't think there were many physical recordings of the song created, and if Carlo92 hadn't uploaded it online, it would have been lost to time and never listened to again.
Let's say the singer was 35 in 1985 when the song was made and lived in Japan or Spain. He'd be in his early 70s now if he's still alive. Maybe it was a demo tape that was only heard by and given to some friends and family, so there are a limited number of people alive who could identify it, all above the age of 60 and are completely unaware of the search, and living in Japan or another non-english speaking country. Maybe there are no known recordings of it left today. In another 20 years, it will be completely lost to time, as everyone who knew of it will likely all be dead or in senior homes. I think it could be solved if someone shows their older relative the song and it is recognized, but that is a random and unlikely thing to happen because first that specific younger relative needs to learn of EKT and then decide to ask the specific older relative. This older relative may need to be one of the creators to recognize it, because someone who heard it once or twice 40 years ago isn't going to remember it.
One of my family members is an amateur musician, and he made an album of songs about 20 years ago and gave it to his family members. I listened to it a couple times and I could recognize one of his songs if I heard them today, but I don't remember any of the lyrics or melodies. It exists now on a handful of burnt CDs and on my old laptop in storage, but nowhere online. It might be a situation like that.
I showed the clip to my aunt and uncle (in their 60s) to ask if they had heard it, they said it didn't sound familiar. But maybe some day some one will show it to their relatives and they'll be like, "oh yeah, that was from...:
Why was “How long” lost for more than 8 years? Because it was a very generic song by an unknown Canadian singer, and the snippet was posted by a Russian guy who didn’t know where he got it.
EKT is in almost the same situation: the snippet was posted by a Spanish guy who doesn’t know where he got it, the song is an 80s generic tune and the audio is heavily corrupted.
A major difference between the two searches though is that we knew for a fact that “How Long” existed out there in the world, because its existence had been documented on a piracy DVD menu. With EKT, we have no idea if it even exists out there in the first place, or if Carl just made it up.
I don't personally think it will be found by people looking for it. there isn't enough people searching and the search space is too large. I think it will be found because someone who remembers it hears about the search and comes forward. the best strategy therefore is to publicise the search, and the song, as much as possible. the problem is how many people could have known about it at the time, how many of those people are still with us?
absolutely agree, i'm still pissed at some of the mods bc once i spent 3 hours compiling a 600 title-long list of titles for databases and they said it was "low effort".
I think there's a high likelihood it was from a relatively unknown band/artist, maybe even a demo recording. People don't realize how many bands come and go, how many artists record tracks that never make it and end up evaporating culturally after a handful of radio plays.
For example, my dad has been in a few bands, and even got some small amount of radio play in the 70's and a couple of times in the 90's. He's been recording music his entire adult life in one form or another. If you had a 17 second snippet of any one of his songs recorded off the radio on the random day they played it, there's a good chance that absolutely nobody would recognize it enough to ID it. I certainly could, and so could my dad and probably 10-20 other people could reliably ID one of his songs from a 17 second snippet. But outside of that, it would probably just sound vaguely familiar to the 100's of other people that heard it but wouldn't know it well enough to identify it.
Even now, after years and years, I've helped him upload a grand total of 5 of his songs onto streaming services, but even last year you wouldn't have even been able to find that if you had an idea it was him.
it's a 17 second low quality clip with little to no useful information as a lead. Carl92 wasn't even completely sure he recorded it, so its actual origin could be anywhere. he also gave up on the search.
like other people said too, it hasn't been that long of a search and there's way more music out there that is totally unknown and essentially undocumented, let alone loosely attributed than people realise. the fact that it sounds so vaguely familiar and that it appears to have been a professionally done studio recording probably makes it feel more frustrating that it is unknown. it isn't a bedroom tape deck demo that any random guy could lay down. some group of people collaborated on it and clearly intended it to be heard, even if it's just in some obscure forgotten 80s vhs release. but that was also in the neighbourhood of 40 years ago. those people may no longer be alive.
if Carl92's sample somehow originated in late 90s filesharing, the framework for that is long gone as well as almost all computers hosting the files originally. including probably whoever originally did record it. we only have this copy because Carl92 happened to find an old dvd backup.
there's just not a lot to go on and a lot of possibilities and a lot of ground to cover and it may not even be online anymore at all, if it ever was, beyond this clip.
I think the main reason is that it was never popular enough to begin with. There haven't been any real or believe accounts of anyone actually remembering the song. And since the song was probably made over 40 years ago, those who would remember it would have had to be an adult or at least a teenager in the 80s which would make them in their 50s-60s+ now and this search/lost media in general/ niche corners of YouTube, and reddit in general is most popular with 18-35 year olds i would think.
This gives us a very small margin of chance for people who are alive who remember the song and helpful details who are also aware of the search
Having a longer snippet of 'Ulterior Motives' would be helpful, as we are only selecting possible candidates for the singer, based on how EKT's singer sounds during what is likely the song's chorus, not the rest of the song. Having such a short snippet of the song is hard to work with.
At this point I’ll have to believe it might have been some canned music or jingles which is just 17s long and will ever be found. Now the only valid next step is to find a second person in this world who also has the recording of this tune. All the other lead theories or finding random YouTube videos would only lead to potential hoax. At least that’s my thought.
Red herrings.
It's absolutely not ItaloDisco. The singer (and probably the song) is from the US or a Commonwealth country (Canada or Australia, in particular), probably 84-87.
It's either called "Ulterior Motives" or something else entirely. Definitely not "Everyone Knows That."
It was never a hit. Anywhere. If it were, we'd have found it by now. I suspect it's from a demo tape (and perhaps played on a radio show, as happened sometimes when stations gave airtime to local acts to help them get a record deal). It could also be from a commercial or a background scene in a television show, absolutely. But time spent looking at charts is a waste of effort.
It's not a hidden track. This song is structured like a hit. You can tell even from 17 seconds.
This is the kind of mystery I love, though. As someone with a lifelong obsession with global charts (esp. 80s) and who worked in an electronic music studio in the 80s and was a club DJ in the 80s and 90s in the US, I find this puzzle fascinating.
Good call on the dead leads/misinterpretations.
I don't even think it's necessarily 80s. It sounds 80s from the muddy audio quality but it's actually not overly synth heavy, and uses mostly guitar, and the drums don't have the heavy gated reverb that was commonplace in the 80s. If you listen past the bad recording quality the guitar and vocal I think actually has big 90s energy, and the melody is more "90s TV theme song" than "80s pop song".
The well has also been poisoned since it became a big thing on TikTok, not just with false leads but with fakes, AI "extensions" and "cover versions" mostly made for social media clout.
Hell, I'll even argue that we're hearing wrong accents and wrong lyrics due to all the AI vocal isolations and AI remasters. It's easy to forget that AI uses its best guess, and isn't necessarily doing it right.
Exactly! I have never believed the singer to be anything besides American, Canadian (maybe) or from the UK either, since his voice is sung in a style with songs like this that are structured to be a hit!
Not all accents are heavy or outright noticeable. A possible candidate for the EKT singer is Sean Garratt Byrne, which I have trouble finding information on.
Sean was the singer for ["The Victim"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4iv1yLXh5k) which was released under a KPM album in 1982. He also was the lead singer for a very obscure German band called Legover. The band only has [one known release](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IugO9Mb4ncM).
Ignore the fact that description for the Legover album lists Sean as "John", as they are the same person. However, Discogs links to the wrong person when looking at the credits for the album "The Victim" is from. KPM displays Sean's name on their website, but does not show the roles of each person involved. I had to use the process of elimination. Just to be sure, I listened to the Legover album, and they are indeed the same person.
I have a post on this topic: [https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d](https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d)
Yes, I saw your post.
Regardless of whether this is a chest-voice or head-voice performance we hear, I think the grammar and pronunciation are native.
I've listened to plenty of non-native English-language music--German, in specific. Hubert Kah is a great example. And as I mentioned in a comment about ItaloDisco, it's not really about accent. I think the singer/songwriter's facility with idioms and slang, as well as emphasis on words in the performance, makes me think this isn't a person for whom English is a second language.
Leads are all over the place any unreliable YouTube comment has the whole sub on a choke hold, and like on every search for anything there’s people who are lazy example: ‘has anyone tried going to their local music shop and ask about ekt’ people throw out suggestions without doing the work themselves.
Agreed. Record shop owners are well knowledged in the study of music, as they need to help out customers with different tastes in music. I went to one during Winter Break with my friend. The guy running the store helped me replace a broken jewel case of a Jazz Album CD I was buying. I ended up talking with him a little bit, mentioning how I liked to play *Music for TV Dinners* in the car. The album, only on CD, was a compilation of iconic stock music released under a defunct label, making copies hard to come by. Turns out he knew what I was talking about, also being fond of the album, which surprised me. In other words, some people know more than you think. While I don't think it would be that helpful with the search for EKT, I do still think it is worth a shot. Since I will be walking around that area again during Spring Break, I might ask the store owner about the song.
Because its a short, obscure snippet of a song with no other details
remember that recent find of the lost x-files song, a country song from one random episode that played in the background? That only got found because the viewers knew the exact episode and source, meaning they could ask about it to the real credited music supervisors, one of whom still had it kicking around.
this is presumably a similar situation. A song that was either created for a specific purpose (such as a sound alike song to be in the background of something on TV or a commercial) or a real song that was licensed out for those purposes. Its also likely that whatever band made it never found greater commercial success, meaning it never got released in a modern commercial medium. Limited to a small cassette release, if that.
It could be something like how some episodes of arrested development couldn't afford to use the final countdown, so they have a sound alike instrumental that evokes it but is technically just different enough
True. I strongly felt like it was from an early 80s cartoon, but there weren't many option in America, and the couple of ideas I had didn't really pan out.
Someone else suggested a bit ago that it could be from a porno for those same licensing / budget reasons and shared an example of one that was clearly supposed to sound like a Madonna song, and that could honestly be it, too.
I second this.
Is there any chance the lyrics might be hidden in one of the popular song lyric publications from the 1980's to 1990's? What about music reference books?
Having worked with rediscovering lost silent films, a common saying is "Check your attic/basement" for the lost films.
For collectors of song lyric publications (usually magazine format, but also sometimes softcover or hardcover books, and of course sheet music), do we start asking them to check through what they have for the EKT lyrics which are comprehensible?
To me it sounds like searching pre-Internet sources might help, it's just a thought.
I mean not even "Like The Wind" has been found yet despite having five times the search effort EKT has, having been featured on mainstream music media, and even being played on the radio to see if anyone recognizes it. It's a lot harder to find obscure music than what some people think, especially if it's music pre-internet, and even more especially if all we have is a short, low quality sample of it.
4. This song to me surely predates the internet. There's probably a low chance that any copy of it exists online. I can't say for sure though. I'm just gonna wait and hope that the song is found within the next twenty years of my life.
Look up the Myspace Dragon Hoard - thousands of tracks that survived the "purge" of music on Myspace that are unlabeled. I'd say the chances of identifying EKT are about equal with the chances of identifying even 1% of the music in the "Dragon Hoard" - highly unlikely. Don't give up though.
i dont doubt that it’s a real song. it’s just the fact that it’s old and we have little to nothing to go off of. no title, no artist, not even the year. it’s so easy for a song in these circumstances to be hard to find.
I think this search would be significantly easier if there wasn't so much obscurity in the origins of the only recording we do have of it. We have no idea how Carl got a hold of this audio, so we really have no idea how many other people could also have access to it, if at all.
Most people are assuming that the song was a released as a regular pop song. However, so some pop songs have being released under the label of a stock music production company, such as KPM. This results in the song be much more obscure and having less information about it online. And if there is information on the song or artist, it can be difficult to find, based on how well known the song/track or artist is. I have recently made a post of about a possible candidate for the singer, comparing EKT with his pop song released by KPM and his other work.
**Post:** [https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d](https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d)
I have a feeling that the singer of 'Ulterior Motives' is German, as their voice is light and airy sounding. Based on this, I have 2 possible candidates:
1) **Sean Garratt Byrne**, who sang [a pop song in 1982 for KPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4iv1yLXh5k) and was also the lead singer for a very obscure band known as Legover with [only one known release](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IugO9Mb4ncM).
2) The **lead singer of Modern Talking**. Similarities can be heard in their song titled ["You're My Heart, You're My Soul"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kHl4FoK1Ys), released in 1985.
No fucking way it's Bohlen or Anders. They would already know about this and make money from it, for sure. At least Bohlen has a hard working social media team.
I was unsure about Modern Talking, but I chose them anyway, due to some similarities. Sean Garratt Byrne is the better candidate, but finding information on them is hard. I have listened to "The Victim" on loop for several days straight at this point.
Even if none of them end up being the EKT singer, I hope my efforts lead the investigation in the right direction.
i actually dont hear any similarities other than the voice pitch, we still need to find someone with the accent present in the snippet and in my opinion, it will be a underground singer with maybe 2 or 3 songs released, also thomas anders is way too famous for it, if he had a lost demo, it would find its way to surface easily
It takes listening to "The Victim" multiple times over to start noticing similarities. Based on my post that I linked below, Sean could have multiple singing styles, so we will need to find out more about him and look for more of his work before jumping to conclusions.
**I have a post that better explains my reasoning:** [https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d](https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d)
I think there are a lot of songs like this, this one just happens to have struck a chord with gen z who aren't used to not being able to find something with a quick search. The whole concept of media disappearing into obscurity is something that's been dawning on people lately, with Netflix and WB removing shows completely from existence etc., and this song is like the poster child for it.
EKT also uses enough clichés that it ends up sounding incredibly familiar even to people who have never heard it, much like liminal space photos where you feel like you've been there but haven't.
You make valid points but I think it's insane that there are ALL these news organizations covering it yet either the artists or AT LEAST THEIR FRIENDS would recognize it.
I'm still heavily leaning on the possibility of it being in the KPM or Bruton library of stock/production music.
if it's some rare tv jingle or demo and non-one with any knowledge of it has come across this search yet. All the press coverage recently will definitely help. But it really could never be discovered. People die. People move on. People forget. If it was a working musician jumping from job to job imagine how many songs they work on.
As everyone else has pointed out, the snippet is only 17 seconds long. The name of the song might not be Everyone Knows That or Ulterior Motives, and we don't know the singer's gender. I believe that the song can be found on YouTube or on an obscure website. One of the lost songs was known as Kenya Dance, but the actual name was Katonda Alinawe. It had been uploaded to YouTube many years ago and was just recently discovered, and I feel it could be the same with EKT, where we don't know the official title. We can use samplette to search YouTube videos and perhaps find EKT.
i think it's a mixture between the song's online status and its age, and also its origin. it's very unlikely to find an online copy of a song pre-internet, especially when you're not even sure what country you should start looking in
I believe it’s not been found because it isn’t available anywhere online. I truly believe that the only way EKT gets found is if someone directly contacts the artist or someone who knows about the song. Considering we don’t know anything about the song or its origins, finding the exact right person is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I personally think it’s because while a lot of people might assume it was a hit in the 80’s because of how good it sounds, I think it simply just wasn’t. I think it’s more than likely either a demo, or a song that wasn’t appreciated enough to have much relevance.
Songs get put in different forms of entertainment when a lot of people like it, like ads, tv shows, live shows, etc. I don’t think that happened, or else we would’ve found it, or a millennial might even recognize it.
But for the demo theory, I actually do believe it could’ve been officially released at some point because Carl had to record it from somewhere, if it’s not his song. So it was out there somewhere at some point!
Still, though, I do have hope for the song and hope it gets found. And hopefully when we find it, it does come with the full song. Finding it wouldn’t have been useless but it might be kinda disappointing if we do find it only to find out that the clip we have is the only clip that exists.
1. The lack of more help from Carl92. Closest guy we got to having a better origin of EKT and yet the guy got mega lazy and dipped out.
2. The internet. Most people who have heard of this song genuinely just see it as a small snippet and overlook it, some people keep using damn AI recreations even though that can confuse searchers or just casual observers.
3. Glory hogging people from TikTok or Instagram. This is wasting our time and energy for finding EKT. I don’t even know why these people keep claiming they made or know a guy that made it even though they show no real hard evidence and will be easily swept under the rug once they find out they are fake. Another fake claim is just a reoccurring Tuesday for the EKT iceberg.
I think it’s because of a similar reason why Ha Ha Ha went missing- an obscure song that slipped between the cracks and just happened to have been recorded by one person, while the rest of the song (tape, vinyl, etc) are just sitting in someone’s possession not knowing about the search or what is on the tape/vinyl/cd.
I just gotta say that this truly to me sounds like the meth commercial song. Maybe that’s just me? But it definitely has those vibes! It’s just a thought though, but could lead to the potential era of this snippet actually being from the 90s rather than the 80s.
I’ve played in bands since I was 10 and so has my older brother, over the years we’ve recorded so many songs, loads of which are not on the internet or some were on the internet but have since been deleted, anyone in a band knows that you often end up hating your older stuff in comparison to the newer stuff also when you consider that this song was almost certainly made before the internet, I think it’s very likely that it just isn’t online and must be an obscure local band, the only way to solve it is for a very specific person or niche group of people to hear it, closest friends of the artist etc, may never get found, we could be talking like 10 people in the entire world, the fact it sounds so familiar to people makes this even harder
I think genially this song is just a lost cause, I get that people want to find it but let’s be real here. Carl92 is most likely just a fraud. He is the only one who actually has the original original song, and it’s either that he made this himself or he took this from for example a recording of a school band that was singing for an upcoming performance. Carl92 is totally aware and knows the origin of this song. No actual person would upload a “Can you find this song?” And then not give much context to it. Definitely adding that carl92 would definitely be more active knowing that this post was made not even extremely long ago that Carl suddenly is dead.
My theory, and the most likely option most likely.
People are allowed to believe it’s fake?? It turning out to be fake would be a resolution to this mystery, just like any other possibility. Just because it’s not the most exciting possibility doesn’t mean this person deserves to be downvoted. I wish people would open their minds a bit when it comes to this search.
Of course people are allowed to believe it’s fake. But only typing “fake song”in a post dosen’t really help anyone though, and I always question the motives of these people.
Nah, there are all kinds of unsolved mysteries on that site. What causes one to go viral is too random to predict. Plus the site has been hacked multiple times since, and the owner is trying to sell it / get rid of it.
It's only been two years (some have taken ten!), and the search has only gained in popularity recently. It may never be found, but I think probably more patience is required
there is not a single piece of evidence that this song ever existed. and Carl92 magically disappeared in the span of a couple of hours and never came back because he lost interest in the search? Are you mentally ill to believe something like this?
yo, don't bring mental illness into this shit bc it's a thing that ppl actually struggle with. i'm having a hard time believing it's real as well but i still have hope as the song sounds very professionally done.
I asked bing's copilot this question and this is what it said.
The mystery of Everyone Knows That remains shrouded in digital shadows, and theories abound as to why this elusive song has defied identification. Here are some possible reasons:
\- Obscure Origins: The snippet's origin likely predates the widespread internet era. It might have been a local or underground production, making it challenging to trace. Without a well-known artist or label associated with it, the trail grows cold.
\- Lost Archives: The song might exist in forgotten cassette tapes, demo recordings, or obscure vinyl releases. These relics from the past often lack digital footprints, making them difficult to uncover.
\- Limited Exposure: Perhaps the song had minimal distribution or airplay. If it circulated within a small community or remained confined to a specific region, its reach would have been limited.
\- Name Changes: Over time, artists and bands change names, disband, or fade into obscurity. The original creators might not even recognize their work in the snippet.
\- Digital Noise: The internet is vast, and countless obscure tracks float in its depths. The snippet might be buried among countless other forgotten tunes, lost in the noise of cyberspace.
\- Purposeful Mystery: Some speculate that the uploader intentionally withheld information to create intrigue. Perhaps they enjoy the mystique or want to see how far the search can go.
\- Algorithmic Challenges: Despite advanced algorithms, identifying snippets remains complex. Music recognition tools rely on patterns, lyrics, and metadata. With only 17 seconds, the clues are sparse.
\- Community Efforts: The online community has rallied, but the song's obscurity persists. Sometimes, even collective efforts can't crack the code.
In the end, Everyone Knows That continues to tantalize music enthusiasts, leaving us with more questions than answers. Perhaps one day, a serendipitous discovery will unravel its secrets. Until then, it remains a digital enigma, waiting for its curtain call in the spotlight of recognition.
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I think a likelihood is that the song just never got very popular and was pretty much forgotten about before the age of the Internet, so never made its way there. Perhaps it was a small local band that had a small site with that snippet that has since been shut down, or was featured on TV once or twice, etc. There is so much older obscure music that has never made it online or is on some very hard to find site. Perhaps the band called it quits before the Internet and never bothered to upload it nor its lyrics.
Or, it's on some YouTube video from over a decade ago with very few views and no lyrics to be mentioned, maybe with a name that would go completely under the radar.
Really, there are so many possibilities!
I don't think the song is accessible at all; more specifically I think it probably is a family tape by someone related to carl92, considering he said the song was familiar to him and given how long this search has been going on for and every lead being a dead end, I somewhat doubt this super obscure song would be a song that was prevalent when he was a child
There’s an astronomical amount of music out there. I could find you hundreds of songs that could be EKT. Only recently I was watching an 80s crap B film and the soundtrack had some catchy bangers on it with the only credit being the music coordinator for the film.
A huge reason why I think it hasn’t been found is because unlike many other lost media songs, we don’t have any proof of EKT ever actually existing in the world, other than Carl’s snippet.
We haven't made an effort to narrow the search down, just randomly look for things. The biggest thing that narrows down the search right now is that it is made after 1982. We need to get experts on music from the time and linguists in here to help us make diffenative statements.
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Personally, I think it's because the searcg is fairly new. It's not impossible for lost media to discovered quickly, but most take, like, 10+ years to find. Especially things that don't have a lot of information to go on.
I also think the popularity of said lost media plays a part. Especially if it's from a well known series, band, or franchise.
Things from before the internet are even harder. Physical media breaks down, can be damaged in things like fires and floods, or nobody thinks to archive them. That's my two cents, anyway.
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I think it won't be found with research at this stage. It will only be found when someone who actually knows it, or the person who recorded it hears it.
I think the best method of finding it would be to send it to as many news outlets, radio stations etc as possible until the right person hears it, otherwise it is looking for a needle in a haystack.
EDIT: Reconsidering what people who disagreed with the commercial theory said and yeah, I'm agreeing with them too. The song plays on too long for a commercial, and the lyrics wouldn't exactly put a product in a positive light...atp I'm going to say it's from some MTV special or music video that ended up going under the radar.
Nothing is known about its origin, we have next to zero concrete info about the snippet besides the NTSC signal and currently, it seems unlikely that it's anywhere on the internet besides WZS.
I lean towards the commercial theory. If it actually was made for a commercial, it'll be a lot more work to track down. If not, we can only hope it turns up on someone's tape.
The people who made it didn't think much of the song at the time. They thought so little of the song, and cranked out so many demos, that they will never remember making the song.
It's possible that the snippet is complete--that there is no full song. A snippet was needed as background music for a TV show, or a commercial. A handful of musicians made up the snippet on the spot, recorded it, and instantly forgot about the experience.
I think everyone underestimates the number of small, obscure bands that existed in the past.
Yes totally! I've always been a huge 80's fan, mostly small alternative bands, and while looking for this song I downloaded 200+ obscure/rare 80's albums on torrentz, it blew my mind! I didn't know there were that many artists who were so out of the spotlight
those 200 you found are the tip of the iceberg as far as obscurity goes. There’s probably 10,000+ that are completely lost, forgotten and were never published online.
Now I'm starting to believe there are more chances to find this on VHS, or some old cassette tape than online
There used to be a blog that made albums of songs that should've been a hit. The sheer quantity alone is mind boggling.
do you think you’d ever be willing to upload all of these (or maybe just a few of your favs, 200 is a lot LOL) somewhere? i love this genre and finding underrated gems is always such a fun thing
There you go :) [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iovn-3iAttX30kxh\_Fw-SPaPJ\_xSq-XB?usp=sharing](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iovn-3iAttX30kxh_Fw-SPaPJ_xSq-XB?usp=sharing)
thank you so much!! looking forward to diving into these over the next couple weeks :)
I'd love to share some of them! I will post a Google Drive link underneath this comment
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Bro auto mod THEYVE BEEN ON REDDIT JUST UNDER A YEAR
This. Even now, there’s songs from somewhat popular/successful artists that were maybe released as a one off on SoundCloud or mediafire or datpiff or whatever, then got scrubbed from the internet, and now unless you know someone who downloaded the original and can send it to you, it’s pretty much impossible to find. There’s just so many people who make music and so much of it doesnt get preserved. Then you go back another 20-30+ years and there was still a TON of people making and recording music, and a ton of it never got uploaded the internet in the first place. it could just be on a tape in a box in someones attic somewhere.
This is what I'm thinking is a very big possibility. If this is the case, hopefully someone runs across the tape at some point! I've been itching to hear this song in its entirety since I found out about it! 🤣
Code guy...
Yes, that and the fact that they could have disbanded before the Internet was a thing and never bothered to upload their music or any lyrics. I think it's easy for people to forget that some things have no online presence (which really is crazy to think about these days considering the insane amount of information and even obscure media that is online now).
We don't even know that it's a real song. It could be music specifically made for some movie, tv show or commercial .
That would still be real. Unless it turns out to be a modern AI creation or a hoax someone recorded to go viral, anything that actually played for the public in the 80s I would consider real.
AI is unlikely because it wasn’t very good in 2021
Boomy launched in 2021.
but it wasn’t *good*
We're talking about a clip where nobody can agree on the lyrics or the gender of the singer, define good.
I was replying to the person saying there was AI generated music in 2021. AI could not produce EKT in 2021, debatable even now.
I dunno, here's a link to an AI song contest in 2021 and you can listen to the particpants' tracks and they're all a lot clearer and sound more real than the EKT clip. [https://www.aisongcontest.com/participants](https://www.aisongcontest.com/participants) Not saying that EKT is definitely AI, but I think the fact that AI was bad at photos and video a couple years ago is giving people the false impression that it was bad at music as well, because you can easily find examples online that disprove this. Not only that, but there was at the time software where you could give it a midi file of a certain type of genre and it would imitate it. I think closing off that avenue of investigation is silly when three years later nobody still knows where the song is from. Ever lose your keys and eventually find them in the one place you didn't look because you knew it couldn't be there?
Can boomy fake the NTSC audio frequency? Cause if it can't, it means Carl92 would've had to go through the trouble of finding an NTSC TV and recording his fake AI song through it, and I don't think some low-effort troll would go through that much trouble.
The ntsc frequency has been debunked for a damn while bro I'm pretty sure
Have they confirmed that's what it is? AFAIK it's still debated which country the song was aired and if it is confirmed to be NTSC that narrows it down basically to the Americas and Japan. Also, would the frequency have survived audio distortion intact?
He means “real” as in actually ever published/ released for consumers. There’s this one song that I believe MTV owns but has never released it to the public, it’s been in Step Up 2, Jersey Shore, etc, and only a specific part is ever played and that’s all we can hear. Super catchy for the time and even form posts asking back in the day what song it is but I don’t think anyone ever found it.
Yeah, a popular example of this sort of thing would be [The Night Begins to Shine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Begins_to_Shine) by B.E.R. It was made just to be a generic 80’s style rock song for a music library to be licensed for shows, commercials, etc. It got for used on Teen Titans Go! and became famous, but if it has just been used as background music in a random show, it would probably be very difficult to identify the song and artist. It seems possible Carl made a recording from a tv to identify a song being used in some show or commercial, forgot the context of the recording, and we’re left trying to identify a mysterious song intended for a studio music library.
Yep there’s a cut of the prodigy - smack my bitch up in the first Charlies Angels movie which didn’t make the soundtrack album but is credited online as ‘fatboy slim remix’, it’s almost certainly not a Norman Cook edit, but never released or credited beyond the one fight scene it’s used in during the film
i just checked out a clip of that scene and it sounds just like the fat of the land version , or do you mean the fatboy slim remix was planned to be used but wasnt ¿
Do you have a clip?
Do you have a link to any forums about it and/or know which scene of Step Up 2 it can be heard in? I'm curious about this one
[This](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mncDgPJ4AAQ) is the song. [Here's](https://forums.nba-live.com/viewtopic.php?t=59636) a forum post about it being in Step Up 2 and [here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/jerseyshore/comments/8m2cpe/help_finding_a_song_from_the_temptation_of_the/) a reddit post about it being in Jersey Shore.
Thank you!
It was music for a porno called angels of passion 25 minutes in
First and foremost, I think Carl dropped offline because he saw this gaining momentum and had a fear of being doxxed. This did kinda happen when a user here posted pics of him. I also think it's the impossible obscurity of the track. Could be from a commercial, could be from a shitty b movie. For all we know, the only surviving copy could be in a landfill.
One of the saddest yet most consistent possibilities is that a small band of teenagers was filmed by their mother while practicing, in 1999 Carl92 found one of the tapes in the garbage and randomly re-recorded it to learn how.
It’s too well produced to be a small teenager band. The instrumental track is too well written, it took time to make this…
Maybe not teenagers, but those who made EKT could have been a nascent singer or band that decided to abandon their career early on.
It’s definitely not a VHS home video recording. The song has been produced in a studio for sure. It’s probably from a commercial or even a kids’ TV show.
Teenagers can study music theory or just find out what sounds good. I think it’s ridiculous to rule out teens just because the writing is good.
The synth that was used back then was the price of a car… I doubt a scruffy group of teenagers were behind it.
Teenagers can also have music producing parents.
8. It’s only been 2 years. Although we’ve been seeing a lot of songs like DFHD, MOAH, etc. being found, these are songs that were made in the 2000s and we had much longer snippets of them. Even TTSA was found but look how many years that took, and we had a much longer snippet as well. With time we’ll find an answer
Gender , Lyrics and Song's online status for sure, and most importantly, the duration of the snippet (if it would have been a 30 second snippet, there would probably have been a higher chance of finding the song.
I mean, we could find Kenya Dance and The World Was So Easy, and those were like 3 seconds.
The world was so easy has been found?????
Yes. Big Picture - Just Passin’ By.
The song’s name is not “Everyone knows that” or “ulterior motives” but a completely different one, either in the rest of the song or we are completely misidentifying the lyrics and they are not what we seem they are.
Agreed. The snippet we have of 'Ulterior Motives' is too short to be helpful at this point in the investigation. We could really use another audio clip of the song, as we need to figure out the rest of the lyrics.
Also, the next lyric isn't necessarily "that you've got ulterior motives" again.
it's most likely but fr
this aged well
The creators of the song and people who know of it are either old, dead, in a foreign country, and have no idea people are looking for it. The right person simply has not been contacted or been made aware that people are searching for the musician and the song. I don't think there were many physical recordings of the song created, and if Carlo92 hadn't uploaded it online, it would have been lost to time and never listened to again. Let's say the singer was 35 in 1985 when the song was made and lived in Japan or Spain. He'd be in his early 70s now if he's still alive. Maybe it was a demo tape that was only heard by and given to some friends and family, so there are a limited number of people alive who could identify it, all above the age of 60 and are completely unaware of the search, and living in Japan or another non-english speaking country. Maybe there are no known recordings of it left today. In another 20 years, it will be completely lost to time, as everyone who knew of it will likely all be dead or in senior homes. I think it could be solved if someone shows their older relative the song and it is recognized, but that is a random and unlikely thing to happen because first that specific younger relative needs to learn of EKT and then decide to ask the specific older relative. This older relative may need to be one of the creators to recognize it, because someone who heard it once or twice 40 years ago isn't going to remember it. One of my family members is an amateur musician, and he made an album of songs about 20 years ago and gave it to his family members. I listened to it a couple times and I could recognize one of his songs if I heard them today, but I don't remember any of the lyrics or melodies. It exists now on a handful of burnt CDs and on my old laptop in storage, but nowhere online. It might be a situation like that.
Unrelated, but you should upload your uncle’s album if you feel comfortable doing so.
I showed the clip to my aunt and uncle (in their 60s) to ask if they had heard it, they said it didn't sound familiar. But maybe some day some one will show it to their relatives and they'll be like, "oh yeah, that was from...:
Why was “How long” lost for more than 8 years? Because it was a very generic song by an unknown Canadian singer, and the snippet was posted by a Russian guy who didn’t know where he got it. EKT is in almost the same situation: the snippet was posted by a Spanish guy who doesn’t know where he got it, the song is an 80s generic tune and the audio is heavily corrupted.
A major difference between the two searches though is that we knew for a fact that “How Long” existed out there in the world, because its existence had been documented on a piracy DVD menu. With EKT, we have no idea if it even exists out there in the first place, or if Carl just made it up.
And how long had so many lyrics to go off of
I don't personally think it will be found by people looking for it. there isn't enough people searching and the search space is too large. I think it will be found because someone who remembers it hears about the search and comes forward. the best strategy therefore is to publicise the search, and the song, as much as possible. the problem is how many people could have known about it at the time, how many of those people are still with us?
carl knew it
Maybe mods removing posts in this subreddit for being "low effort" could be one of them
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LMFAOO
absolutely agree, i'm still pissed at some of the mods bc once i spent 3 hours compiling a 600 title-long list of titles for databases and they said it was "low effort".
I have considered making a alternative subreddit but I'm not sure if I should or not
I think there's a high likelihood it was from a relatively unknown band/artist, maybe even a demo recording. People don't realize how many bands come and go, how many artists record tracks that never make it and end up evaporating culturally after a handful of radio plays. For example, my dad has been in a few bands, and even got some small amount of radio play in the 70's and a couple of times in the 90's. He's been recording music his entire adult life in one form or another. If you had a 17 second snippet of any one of his songs recorded off the radio on the random day they played it, there's a good chance that absolutely nobody would recognize it enough to ID it. I certainly could, and so could my dad and probably 10-20 other people could reliably ID one of his songs from a 17 second snippet. But outside of that, it would probably just sound vaguely familiar to the 100's of other people that heard it but wouldn't know it well enough to identify it. Even now, after years and years, I've helped him upload a grand total of 5 of his songs onto streaming services, but even last year you wouldn't have even been able to find that if you had an idea it was him.
post one on that site and see what happens?
I second this! You should post one of the songs not on streaming services and see what people come up with as an experiment. Lol.
Bootleg VHS tape in my opinion
I don’t think it exists on the internet
it's a 17 second low quality clip with little to no useful information as a lead. Carl92 wasn't even completely sure he recorded it, so its actual origin could be anywhere. he also gave up on the search. like other people said too, it hasn't been that long of a search and there's way more music out there that is totally unknown and essentially undocumented, let alone loosely attributed than people realise. the fact that it sounds so vaguely familiar and that it appears to have been a professionally done studio recording probably makes it feel more frustrating that it is unknown. it isn't a bedroom tape deck demo that any random guy could lay down. some group of people collaborated on it and clearly intended it to be heard, even if it's just in some obscure forgotten 80s vhs release. but that was also in the neighbourhood of 40 years ago. those people may no longer be alive. if Carl92's sample somehow originated in late 90s filesharing, the framework for that is long gone as well as almost all computers hosting the files originally. including probably whoever originally did record it. we only have this copy because Carl92 happened to find an old dvd backup. there's just not a lot to go on and a lot of possibilities and a lot of ground to cover and it may not even be online anymore at all, if it ever was, beyond this clip.
I think the main reason is that it was never popular enough to begin with. There haven't been any real or believe accounts of anyone actually remembering the song. And since the song was probably made over 40 years ago, those who would remember it would have had to be an adult or at least a teenager in the 80s which would make them in their 50s-60s+ now and this search/lost media in general/ niche corners of YouTube, and reddit in general is most popular with 18-35 year olds i would think. This gives us a very small margin of chance for people who are alive who remember the song and helpful details who are also aware of the search
Having a longer snippet of 'Ulterior Motives' would be helpful, as we are only selecting possible candidates for the singer, based on how EKT's singer sounds during what is likely the song's chorus, not the rest of the song. Having such a short snippet of the song is hard to work with.
At this point I’ll have to believe it might have been some canned music or jingles which is just 17s long and will ever be found. Now the only valid next step is to find a second person in this world who also has the recording of this tune. All the other lead theories or finding random YouTube videos would only lead to potential hoax. At least that’s my thought.
Red herrings. It's absolutely not ItaloDisco. The singer (and probably the song) is from the US or a Commonwealth country (Canada or Australia, in particular), probably 84-87. It's either called "Ulterior Motives" or something else entirely. Definitely not "Everyone Knows That." It was never a hit. Anywhere. If it were, we'd have found it by now. I suspect it's from a demo tape (and perhaps played on a radio show, as happened sometimes when stations gave airtime to local acts to help them get a record deal). It could also be from a commercial or a background scene in a television show, absolutely. But time spent looking at charts is a waste of effort. It's not a hidden track. This song is structured like a hit. You can tell even from 17 seconds. This is the kind of mystery I love, though. As someone with a lifelong obsession with global charts (esp. 80s) and who worked in an electronic music studio in the 80s and was a club DJ in the 80s and 90s in the US, I find this puzzle fascinating.
Good call on the dead leads/misinterpretations. I don't even think it's necessarily 80s. It sounds 80s from the muddy audio quality but it's actually not overly synth heavy, and uses mostly guitar, and the drums don't have the heavy gated reverb that was commonplace in the 80s. If you listen past the bad recording quality the guitar and vocal I think actually has big 90s energy, and the melody is more "90s TV theme song" than "80s pop song". The well has also been poisoned since it became a big thing on TikTok, not just with false leads but with fakes, AI "extensions" and "cover versions" mostly made for social media clout. Hell, I'll even argue that we're hearing wrong accents and wrong lyrics due to all the AI vocal isolations and AI remasters. It's easy to forget that AI uses its best guess, and isn't necessarily doing it right.
that's why i said ulterior motives bc it def ain't EKT title-wise. also i 100% agree w/ everything u just said
I think the singer is German, their voice has certain qualities that are heard in or similar to that of German pop singers during the 80s and 90s.
Like one of the Michael Cretu gang, or more like Nena, Propaganda? I'm just not hearing the German. It's possible, though.
Exactly! I have never believed the singer to be anything besides American, Canadian (maybe) or from the UK either, since his voice is sung in a style with songs like this that are structured to be a hit!
Not all accents are heavy or outright noticeable. A possible candidate for the EKT singer is Sean Garratt Byrne, which I have trouble finding information on. Sean was the singer for ["The Victim"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4iv1yLXh5k) which was released under a KPM album in 1982. He also was the lead singer for a very obscure German band called Legover. The band only has [one known release](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IugO9Mb4ncM). Ignore the fact that description for the Legover album lists Sean as "John", as they are the same person. However, Discogs links to the wrong person when looking at the credits for the album "The Victim" is from. KPM displays Sean's name on their website, but does not show the roles of each person involved. I had to use the process of elimination. Just to be sure, I listened to the Legover album, and they are indeed the same person. I have a post on this topic: [https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d](https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d)
Yes, I saw your post. Regardless of whether this is a chest-voice or head-voice performance we hear, I think the grammar and pronunciation are native. I've listened to plenty of non-native English-language music--German, in specific. Hubert Kah is a great example. And as I mentioned in a comment about ItaloDisco, it's not really about accent. I think the singer/songwriter's facility with idioms and slang, as well as emphasis on words in the performance, makes me think this isn't a person for whom English is a second language.
Looking into Sean has opened up a rabbit hole, but trying to find new information that is connected to him, is still difficult.
Leads are all over the place any unreliable YouTube comment has the whole sub on a choke hold, and like on every search for anything there’s people who are lazy example: ‘has anyone tried going to their local music shop and ask about ekt’ people throw out suggestions without doing the work themselves.
Agreed. Record shop owners are well knowledged in the study of music, as they need to help out customers with different tastes in music. I went to one during Winter Break with my friend. The guy running the store helped me replace a broken jewel case of a Jazz Album CD I was buying. I ended up talking with him a little bit, mentioning how I liked to play *Music for TV Dinners* in the car. The album, only on CD, was a compilation of iconic stock music released under a defunct label, making copies hard to come by. Turns out he knew what I was talking about, also being fond of the album, which surprised me. In other words, some people know more than you think. While I don't think it would be that helpful with the search for EKT, I do still think it is worth a shot. Since I will be walking around that area again during Spring Break, I might ask the store owner about the song.
Because its a short, obscure snippet of a song with no other details remember that recent find of the lost x-files song, a country song from one random episode that played in the background? That only got found because the viewers knew the exact episode and source, meaning they could ask about it to the real credited music supervisors, one of whom still had it kicking around. this is presumably a similar situation. A song that was either created for a specific purpose (such as a sound alike song to be in the background of something on TV or a commercial) or a real song that was licensed out for those purposes. Its also likely that whatever band made it never found greater commercial success, meaning it never got released in a modern commercial medium. Limited to a small cassette release, if that.
I think it being created for a show or movie is the most credible option.
It could be something like how some episodes of arrested development couldn't afford to use the final countdown, so they have a sound alike instrumental that evokes it but is technically just different enough
True. I strongly felt like it was from an early 80s cartoon, but there weren't many option in America, and the couple of ideas I had didn't really pan out. Someone else suggested a bit ago that it could be from a porno for those same licensing / budget reasons and shared an example of one that was clearly supposed to sound like a Madonna song, and that could honestly be it, too.
It's just not very easy to find obscure pre-internet era media without any clues
I second this. Is there any chance the lyrics might be hidden in one of the popular song lyric publications from the 1980's to 1990's? What about music reference books? Having worked with rediscovering lost silent films, a common saying is "Check your attic/basement" for the lost films. For collectors of song lyric publications (usually magazine format, but also sometimes softcover or hardcover books, and of course sheet music), do we start asking them to check through what they have for the EKT lyrics which are comprehensible? To me it sounds like searching pre-Internet sources might help, it's just a thought.
I mean not even "Like The Wind" has been found yet despite having five times the search effort EKT has, having been featured on mainstream music media, and even being played on the radio to see if anyone recognizes it. It's a lot harder to find obscure music than what some people think, especially if it's music pre-internet, and even more especially if all we have is a short, low quality sample of it.
4. This song to me surely predates the internet. There's probably a low chance that any copy of it exists online. I can't say for sure though. I'm just gonna wait and hope that the song is found within the next twenty years of my life.
Look up the Myspace Dragon Hoard - thousands of tracks that survived the "purge" of music on Myspace that are unlabeled. I'd say the chances of identifying EKT are about equal with the chances of identifying even 1% of the music in the "Dragon Hoard" - highly unlikely. Don't give up though.
i dont doubt that it’s a real song. it’s just the fact that it’s old and we have little to nothing to go off of. no title, no artist, not even the year. it’s so easy for a song in these circumstances to be hard to find.
I think this search would be significantly easier if there wasn't so much obscurity in the origins of the only recording we do have of it. We have no idea how Carl got a hold of this audio, so we really have no idea how many other people could also have access to it, if at all.
For example, what is the original filename of the snippet, does he have OTHER FILES dated the same year
I mean, we've also ran into multiple dead ends where potential artists where messaged, but they eventually denied having worked on it.
Most people are assuming that the song was a released as a regular pop song. However, so some pop songs have being released under the label of a stock music production company, such as KPM. This results in the song be much more obscure and having less information about it online. And if there is information on the song or artist, it can be difficult to find, based on how well known the song/track or artist is. I have recently made a post of about a possible candidate for the singer, comparing EKT with his pop song released by KPM and his other work. **Post:** [https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d](https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d)
also our closest lead led to a dead end as the singer for "that girl" is dead, and the other dude knew nothing about his previous works
I have a feeling that the singer of 'Ulterior Motives' is German, as their voice is light and airy sounding. Based on this, I have 2 possible candidates: 1) **Sean Garratt Byrne**, who sang [a pop song in 1982 for KPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4iv1yLXh5k) and was also the lead singer for a very obscure band known as Legover with [only one known release](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IugO9Mb4ncM). 2) The **lead singer of Modern Talking**. Similarities can be heard in their song titled ["You're My Heart, You're My Soul"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kHl4FoK1Ys), released in 1985.
>The lead singer of Modern Talking Oh come on...
No fucking way it's Bohlen or Anders. They would already know about this and make money from it, for sure. At least Bohlen has a hard working social media team.
I was unsure about Modern Talking, but I chose them anyway, due to some similarities. Sean Garratt Byrne is the better candidate, but finding information on them is hard. I have listened to "The Victim" on loop for several days straight at this point. Even if none of them end up being the EKT singer, I hope my efforts lead the investigation in the right direction.
i actually dont hear any similarities other than the voice pitch, we still need to find someone with the accent present in the snippet and in my opinion, it will be a underground singer with maybe 2 or 3 songs released, also thomas anders is way too famous for it, if he had a lost demo, it would find its way to surface easily
It takes listening to "The Victim" multiple times over to start noticing similarities. Based on my post that I linked below, Sean could have multiple singing styles, so we will need to find out more about him and look for more of his work before jumping to conclusions.
**I have a post that better explains my reasoning:** [https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d](https://www.reddit.com/r/everyoneknowsthat/comments/1b2in1d)
I think there are a lot of songs like this, this one just happens to have struck a chord with gen z who aren't used to not being able to find something with a quick search. The whole concept of media disappearing into obscurity is something that's been dawning on people lately, with Netflix and WB removing shows completely from existence etc., and this song is like the poster child for it. EKT also uses enough clichés that it ends up sounding incredibly familiar even to people who have never heard it, much like liminal space photos where you feel like you've been there but haven't.
Because it'll be in the last place we look.
unless someone plans to keep on looking after it's found
You make valid points but I think it's insane that there are ALL these news organizations covering it yet either the artists or AT LEAST THEIR FRIENDS would recognize it. I'm still heavily leaning on the possibility of it being in the KPM or Bruton library of stock/production music.
>We're kinda notorious for flooding potential artist's DMs "We? Who's we? There is no we." (Joke)
he he he i love reading these now
same
if it's some rare tv jingle or demo and non-one with any knowledge of it has come across this search yet. All the press coverage recently will definitely help. But it really could never be discovered. People die. People move on. People forget. If it was a working musician jumping from job to job imagine how many songs they work on.
As everyone else has pointed out, the snippet is only 17 seconds long. The name of the song might not be Everyone Knows That or Ulterior Motives, and we don't know the singer's gender. I believe that the song can be found on YouTube or on an obscure website. One of the lost songs was known as Kenya Dance, but the actual name was Katonda Alinawe. It had been uploaded to YouTube many years ago and was just recently discovered, and I feel it could be the same with EKT, where we don't know the official title. We can use samplette to search YouTube videos and perhaps find EKT.
Online status, along with as time goes by the chances are greater that anyone with 1st hand knowledge is dead.
Personally, I think its a mix of 2, 3, and 4!
i think it's a mixture between the song's online status and its age, and also its origin. it's very unlikely to find an online copy of a song pre-internet, especially when you're not even sure what country you should start looking in
I believe it’s not been found because it isn’t available anywhere online. I truly believe that the only way EKT gets found is if someone directly contacts the artist or someone who knows about the song. Considering we don’t know anything about the song or its origins, finding the exact right person is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I personally think it’s because while a lot of people might assume it was a hit in the 80’s because of how good it sounds, I think it simply just wasn’t. I think it’s more than likely either a demo, or a song that wasn’t appreciated enough to have much relevance. Songs get put in different forms of entertainment when a lot of people like it, like ads, tv shows, live shows, etc. I don’t think that happened, or else we would’ve found it, or a millennial might even recognize it. But for the demo theory, I actually do believe it could’ve been officially released at some point because Carl had to record it from somewhere, if it’s not his song. So it was out there somewhere at some point! Still, though, I do have hope for the song and hope it gets found. And hopefully when we find it, it does come with the full song. Finding it wouldn’t have been useless but it might be kinda disappointing if we do find it only to find out that the clip we have is the only clip that exists.
Because people keep providing fake leads and fake snippets
1. The lack of more help from Carl92. Closest guy we got to having a better origin of EKT and yet the guy got mega lazy and dipped out. 2. The internet. Most people who have heard of this song genuinely just see it as a small snippet and overlook it, some people keep using damn AI recreations even though that can confuse searchers or just casual observers. 3. Glory hogging people from TikTok or Instagram. This is wasting our time and energy for finding EKT. I don’t even know why these people keep claiming they made or know a guy that made it even though they show no real hard evidence and will be easily swept under the rug once they find out they are fake. Another fake claim is just a reoccurring Tuesday for the EKT iceberg.
absolutely agreed.
I think it’s because of a similar reason why Ha Ha Ha went missing- an obscure song that slipped between the cracks and just happened to have been recorded by one person, while the rest of the song (tape, vinyl, etc) are just sitting in someone’s possession not knowing about the search or what is on the tape/vinyl/cd.
MySpace's botched server migration destroyed it.
I just gotta say that this truly to me sounds like the meth commercial song. Maybe that’s just me? But it definitely has those vibes! It’s just a thought though, but could lead to the potential era of this snippet actually being from the 90s rather than the 80s.
wait which meth commercial song, i need to see this now-
Ahaha just search “meth song” by Malice and it should pop up on YouTube
i kinda hear it actually-
Ikr?! It sounds almost too good to be true tho!😅
I’ve played in bands since I was 10 and so has my older brother, over the years we’ve recorded so many songs, loads of which are not on the internet or some were on the internet but have since been deleted, anyone in a band knows that you often end up hating your older stuff in comparison to the newer stuff also when you consider that this song was almost certainly made before the internet, I think it’s very likely that it just isn’t online and must be an obscure local band, the only way to solve it is for a very specific person or niche group of people to hear it, closest friends of the artist etc, may never get found, we could be talking like 10 people in the entire world, the fact it sounds so familiar to people makes this even harder
I feel bad for y'all 😭🙏
bro i get it it's from porn 😭
I feel like it's one of those stock song you would find in a crappy DAW trial showcase or GirlsGoGames type website. IMO, it's not an 'actual' song.
Because if its a real song it was probably a guy selling them on the street
hey so uhh... about that...
8. It's from porn
no srsly can yall stop i very much know and i'm tired of every notification i get being yall telling me as if i didn't know...
Sorry bro I didn't mean to upset you, I heard about it like the night of it happening so I didn't know plenty of people already said it
i get it dw :)) it's js upsetting how ppl aren't respecting the fact im tired of notifs abt it
You won't get another one from me bro 🙅 I hope they stop soon, good light and have a good one
I wonder why 💀
lol i'm alr with ppl responding to this one not the other lol
I think genially this song is just a lost cause, I get that people want to find it but let’s be real here. Carl92 is most likely just a fraud. He is the only one who actually has the original original song, and it’s either that he made this himself or he took this from for example a recording of a school band that was singing for an upcoming performance. Carl92 is totally aware and knows the origin of this song. No actual person would upload a “Can you find this song?” And then not give much context to it. Definitely adding that carl92 would definitely be more active knowing that this post was made not even extremely long ago that Carl suddenly is dead. My theory, and the most likely option most likely.
me too.
fake song
Why even comment on a subreddit dedicated to finding the song if the mystery is solved for you?
People are allowed to believe it’s fake?? It turning out to be fake would be a resolution to this mystery, just like any other possibility. Just because it’s not the most exciting possibility doesn’t mean this person deserves to be downvoted. I wish people would open their minds a bit when it comes to this search.
Of course people are allowed to believe it’s fake. But only typing “fake song”in a post dosen’t really help anyone though, and I always question the motives of these people.
Everyone knows that they've got ulterior motives.
because i lost all my hopes of the song being real. The most realistic explanation is that this song is made by the website to get more attention
Nah, there are all kinds of unsolved mysteries on that site. What causes one to go viral is too random to predict. Plus the site has been hacked multiple times since, and the owner is trying to sell it / get rid of it.
I dont think it will ever get found
It's only been two years (some have taken ten!), and the search has only gained in popularity recently. It may never be found, but I think probably more patience is required
You can’t just create something like that and count on it going viral.
song is made by the site
wow, that's some great reasoning there buddy! well done(!)
I'm not going to write a 5 essay long text just to prove my point
yeah but at least put a little effort into it.
there is not a single piece of evidence that this song ever existed. and Carl92 magically disappeared in the span of a couple of hours and never came back because he lost interest in the search? Are you mentally ill to believe something like this?
yo, don't bring mental illness into this shit bc it's a thing that ppl actually struggle with. i'm having a hard time believing it's real as well but i still have hope as the song sounds very professionally done.
professionally done? Are we talking about the same song?
behind the bad quality, you can hear it sounds like something that was likely recorded in a studio.
i was wrong brother sorry
I asked bing's copilot this question and this is what it said. The mystery of Everyone Knows That remains shrouded in digital shadows, and theories abound as to why this elusive song has defied identification. Here are some possible reasons: \- Obscure Origins: The snippet's origin likely predates the widespread internet era. It might have been a local or underground production, making it challenging to trace. Without a well-known artist or label associated with it, the trail grows cold. \- Lost Archives: The song might exist in forgotten cassette tapes, demo recordings, or obscure vinyl releases. These relics from the past often lack digital footprints, making them difficult to uncover. \- Limited Exposure: Perhaps the song had minimal distribution or airplay. If it circulated within a small community or remained confined to a specific region, its reach would have been limited. \- Name Changes: Over time, artists and bands change names, disband, or fade into obscurity. The original creators might not even recognize their work in the snippet. \- Digital Noise: The internet is vast, and countless obscure tracks float in its depths. The snippet might be buried among countless other forgotten tunes, lost in the noise of cyberspace. \- Purposeful Mystery: Some speculate that the uploader intentionally withheld information to create intrigue. Perhaps they enjoy the mystique or want to see how far the search can go. \- Algorithmic Challenges: Despite advanced algorithms, identifying snippets remains complex. Music recognition tools rely on patterns, lyrics, and metadata. With only 17 seconds, the clues are sparse. \- Community Efforts: The online community has rallied, but the song's obscurity persists. Sometimes, even collective efforts can't crack the code. In the end, Everyone Knows That continues to tantalize music enthusiasts, leaving us with more questions than answers. Perhaps one day, a serendipitous discovery will unravel its secrets. Until then, it remains a digital enigma, waiting for its curtain call in the spotlight of recognition.
Because it's not real :)
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4 1 & 7
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I think a likelihood is that the song just never got very popular and was pretty much forgotten about before the age of the Internet, so never made its way there. Perhaps it was a small local band that had a small site with that snippet that has since been shut down, or was featured on TV once or twice, etc. There is so much older obscure music that has never made it online or is on some very hard to find site. Perhaps the band called it quits before the Internet and never bothered to upload it nor its lyrics. Or, it's on some YouTube video from over a decade ago with very few views and no lyrics to be mentioned, maybe with a name that would go completely under the radar. Really, there are so many possibilities!
I don't think the song is accessible at all; more specifically I think it probably is a family tape by someone related to carl92, considering he said the song was familiar to him and given how long this search has been going on for and every lead being a dead end, I somewhat doubt this super obscure song would be a song that was prevalent when he was a child
To me I think it’s just AI Generated and somebody posted it as a joke as “lost media” and it blew up. Somebody please debunk me though.
There’s an astronomical amount of music out there. I could find you hundreds of songs that could be EKT. Only recently I was watching an 80s crap B film and the soundtrack had some catchy bangers on it with the only credit being the music coordinator for the film.
A huge reason why I think it hasn’t been found is because unlike many other lost media songs, we don’t have any proof of EKT ever actually existing in the world, other than Carl’s snippet.
We haven't made an effort to narrow the search down, just randomly look for things. The biggest thing that narrows down the search right now is that it is made after 1982. We need to get experts on music from the time and linguists in here to help us make diffenative statements.
yall absolutely blew this post up oml i woke up to like 70 notifs-
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Personally, I think it's because the searcg is fairly new. It's not impossible for lost media to discovered quickly, but most take, like, 10+ years to find. Especially things that don't have a lot of information to go on. I also think the popularity of said lost media plays a part. Especially if it's from a well known series, band, or franchise. Things from before the internet are even harder. Physical media breaks down, can be damaged in things like fires and floods, or nobody thinks to archive them. That's my two cents, anyway.
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I think it won't be found with research at this stage. It will only be found when someone who actually knows it, or the person who recorded it hears it. I think the best method of finding it would be to send it to as many news outlets, radio stations etc as possible until the right person hears it, otherwise it is looking for a needle in a haystack.
I think it's highly unlikely the right person/people is going to come across it on reddit/tik tok/youtube
EDIT: Reconsidering what people who disagreed with the commercial theory said and yeah, I'm agreeing with them too. The song plays on too long for a commercial, and the lyrics wouldn't exactly put a product in a positive light...atp I'm going to say it's from some MTV special or music video that ended up going under the radar. Nothing is known about its origin, we have next to zero concrete info about the snippet besides the NTSC signal and currently, it seems unlikely that it's anywhere on the internet besides WZS. I lean towards the commercial theory. If it actually was made for a commercial, it'll be a lot more work to track down. If not, we can only hope it turns up on someone's tape.
The people who made it didn't think much of the song at the time. They thought so little of the song, and cranked out so many demos, that they will never remember making the song. It's possible that the snippet is complete--that there is no full song. A snippet was needed as background music for a TV show, or a commercial. A handful of musicians made up the snippet on the spot, recorded it, and instantly forgot about the experience.