Attention: The internet just solved a 17-year-old mystery that’s been puzzling audiophiles and Reddit sleuths alike.

For nearly two decades, music enthusiasts and internet detectives have been captivated by a mysterious tune known as “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet”. This enigmatic track, which first emerged in 2007 after being digitised from a cassette recording made in the 1980s, has sparked a global hunt for its origins, leaving countless theories and dead ends in its wake.

But thanks to the relentless efforts of a dedicated, resourceful and global group of online detectives aka the Internet, the mystery has finally been unravelled: the song is titled Subways of the Mind, performed by the little-known German band FEX.

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Back in 2004, a teenager named Darius S. who recorded the song from a radio broadcast in Germany posted it on a website along with other unknown songs in hopes of identifying them. The search for the song’s origins gained significant momentum in 2019, when Reddit got involved and a Brazilian teen uploaded the track to YouTube.

The breakthrough came earlier this week when user Marijn1412 from The Mysterious Song subreddit discovered the band FEX while sifting through the archives of a Hamburg local music festival.

He reached out to one of the band members, who confirmed his involvement with FEX and shared several recordings, including a version of Subways of the Mind. With the mystery solved, this elusive piece of music is now set to reclaim its place in the spotlight — much to the surprise of its original creators, who were completely unaware of their song’s enduring legacy.

68-year-old Michael Haedrich, who played keyboard and guitar for FEX, tells Der Spiegel magazine that the members were “completely overwhelmed” by the news. He adds that the band are keen to reissue Subways of Your Mind and are trying to track down the original recording of the song.

“I thought it was amazing that someone was interested in music by a band that was only successful regionally, if at all, and that was over 40 years ago,” Haedrich says.

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