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 and its origins date back to the mid-19th century, when audio recording began with the invention of the phonautograph and the phonograph by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville and Thomas Edison, respectively. The preservation of early music recordings has presented significant challenges, as, according to the Library of Congress, many of these recordings, spanning from the late 19th to the early 20th century, have become lost over time. For instance, as of 2024, only two percent of the more than 3,000 wax cylinders produced by the North American Phonograph Company between 1889 and 1894 are preserved in the National Recording Preservation Board's sound recording library.[2]
The term "lostwave" originated 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.[3] [4]
See main article: article and Spelling on the Stone.
"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.
See main article: article and Ready 'n' Steady.
"Ready 'n' Steady" is a song by American musicians Dennis Lucchesi and Jim Franks, credited as D.A, which was recorded in 1979. Despite never being publicly or commercially released, the song debuted on the Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart at number 106, rising to number 102 before disappearing from the chart.[6] To date, the song is the only song without an official release to appear on a Billboard chart. The song's existence was in question for many years,[7] but was confirmed to be real in 2016. It was aired on KFAI in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, that same year, the only known instance of it being aired on radio.[8]
See main article: article and The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet.
"The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" was recorded by teenager Darius S. from a radio program that aired on the West German public radio station Norddeutscher Rundfunk.[9] [10] 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 and title are unknown.[11]
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.[12]
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.[13] [14]
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").[15] [16] [17] He suspects that it was a demo recording that was played once by an NDR presenter and then discarded.[18]
See main article: article and Ulterior Motives (song). In 2021, WatZatSong user carl92 uploaded a 17-second snippet of a song recorded between 1982 and 1999; they claimed to have found the recording amongst files in a DVD backup, and speculated that it was a leftover from when they were learning to record audio. They also claimed that the snippet was from 1999 and possibly from Spain, where they claimed to live.[19] [20] 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.[21] 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.[22] Theorized sources for the song included a 1990s MTV broadcast, production music, or a commercial jingle.[23]
On 28 April 2024, the song was identified as "Ulterior Motives" by Christopher and Phillip Booth, from the 1980s pornographic film Angels of Passion.[24]
"On the Roof" is a song by Swedish musician Johan Lindell, under the name Stay (The Second Time Around). It remained unidentified until 2013 when a listener of Swedish radio station PP3, played the song in hopes that others would recognize it. Lindell had since abandoned music to pursue a career in painting, and was unaware of the search.[25]
See main article: article and Panchiko.
In 2016, a 4chan user asked for help identifying a demo EP of D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L by Panchiko which he had found in a Oxfam shop in Britain. Despite the band name, album name, and cover art being visible, the band members, Owain, Andy, Shaun, and John, were identified only by their first names, and there was no information about the band or its members online. In 2020, the band members were identified by using metadata from the price sticker to geolocate the charity shop to Sherwood, Nottingham, and contacting Facebook users with the same first names in the Sherwood area.[26] The band has since reunited and gone on multiple international tours, as well as make a debut album.[27]
See main article: How Long (Paula Toledo song). "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. 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".[28] In December 2023, user the-arabara found the song after searching the database of Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada.[29] After Toledo learned of the search from her son, she uploaded it to Bandcamp and other streaming services, with the funds from the Bandcamp page being donated to the Music Heals Charitable Foundation.[30] Soon after, fake versions of the song began to appear on streaming services, which she suspected to be streaming fraud.[31]