"Subways of Your Mind" is a single by German new wave band Fex,recorded in 1984. In 1985,a democassette tape containing the song was released to promote the band's live tour across Northern and Central Germany,with the tape itself being primarily sold at the tour.[1] On 18 March 2007,a cassette tape recording from a radio broadcast in the mid-1980s was uploaded online and garnered significant attention. The song remained unidentified,even after being uploaded to the Internet,prompting a 17-year-long search to identify the artist and song title. During this search,the song earned the nickname "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet".[note 2]
The song was recorded privately in Wilhelmshaven from a radio broadcast during the mid-1980s,possibly around 1984.[2] In 2019,it became the subject of a viral Internet phenomenon,with many users of sites such as Reddit and Discord collaborating to identify the song and recording artist.[2]
On 4 November 2024,the song was identified by Reddit user u/marijn1412 as "Subways of Your Mind" by Fex,a rock band from Kiel. Confirmation came with the release of a 1985 EP featuring a studio version of the song,as well as a recording of a live performance in the same year.[3][4][5] On 12 January 2025,the daughter of the band's keyboardist Michael Hädrich posted to the Reddit community formed around the song that her father had found a cassette copy of the NDR version that had been played on German radio around 1984. The copy was released as a digital single the following day.[6] However,the ¼master tape containing this version has yet to be found.[7] On 4 November,a higher-quality version of the NDR broadcast version of the track was found on tape in lead singer Ture Rückwardt's archives and uploaded to Bandcamp,containing an extended fadeout.
"Subways of Your Mind" is one of the most famous examples of lostwave,which refers to music of obscure or unknown origins.
Composition
In a interview shortly after the song had been solved,Fex's keyboardist,Michael Hädrich,gave an account of the song's inspiration and meaning:
Well, Ture, he's the composer, so he could answer this best but I know what his opinion is on this. It is the mixture of the "no future" atmosphere at that time – remember, it was the Cold War in the eighties, everyone thought eventually someone is going to hit the red button, so this was the atmosphere, and so the song had this "sun will never shine" parts in it – but also "the young and restless dreamers". So there are always positive lines in it that give a contrast to the melancholic part of the song. And I think this contrast, this mixture of positive and fear, makes the song so attractive, yes? Simplicity – somehow it has a simplistic charm to it, and it transports this atmosphere.
Three different studio recordings of Subways of Your Mind are known to exist. The first time the song was recorded was in June 1984, about a month before the NDR version, at the practice room building of the band, located in Heikendorf.[9] This recording is of worse sound quality than the later recordings due to have been recorded from a microphone next to a bass amp, and due to time. The bassist on this recording is Jörg Lemcke, who also provided the recording.[10] Michael Hädrich was not present for this rehearsal, and as such does not play on this recording.
The second recording of the song took place between the rehearsal and studio sessions. It was once believed to have been released in 1983 with Volker Schenk, the original bassist of Fex, due to him remembering about it and an alledged vinyl release, but this was proven false by Jörg Lemcke, the second Fex bassist, who recalled the day Rückwardt first came up with the song and started rehearsing it with the band. This therefore debunked the possibility of the song being recorded in 1983 or with Volker, as he had left to join a jazz band before the song was composed. On 8 April 2026, new information about the session in which the song was recorded was revealed, proving that Lemcke was the bassist for this recording. It was also confirmed that an Ibanez Jazz Bass was used during the recording of those tracks.[11] Prior to the discovery, it was rumored that the bassist was either Rückwardt or Lemcke. This recording, named "NDR recording" by the community, was recorded by "Löffelstudios", a generic name used by Hase, Fex's sound engineer at the time, to qualify any place where he kept his mixing equipment, while the session took place in the same practice room.[12] This is the version of the song that was aired on NDR, although the band have no idea how it was broadcasted on there. The intro on this recording is shorter than the other two, and this recording has a fade-out ending. On one of the copies, the beginning of a new keyboard part can be heard. According to Hädrich, each copy of the song had an individual fadeout.
The third and professional studio recording of this song, which is featured on their 1985 EP sold during their tour, was recorded in November 1984 at Hawkeye Studios in Ganderkesee, produced by Jeff Burke and mixed by Hase. The longer intro and ending from the Heikendorf recording is kept, with NDR keyboard parts being kept and developed. The bassist on this recording is Norbert Ziermann.[5] Additionally, the lyrics between all three recordings feature minor differences.
Live
Five live recordings of the song are known to exist as well, due to the band recording their own concerts in order to review them afterwards and see where they could improve, although only three have surfaced.
The first recording dates from 9 June 1984,[13] which predates the Heikendorf rehearsal session, and was recorded during a performance in a show room named Lutterbeker. It features the same lineup as Heikendorf rehearsal, although Rückwardt's wife Ilona performs backing vocals on the recording, and Michael Hädrich appears on keyboard. According to Lemcke, Rückwardt own this recording, which have yet to be released.
The second live recording was recorded on March 20, 1985, during a performance in the town of Uelzen, and features the same lineup as the one on the 1984 studio recording. It is planned to be released in May 2026.
The third live recording was a performance made on May 25, 1985 at the Roxy in Paderborn. The lineup on here is the same as the previous performance. This particular recording was the first to surface online, after Hädrich provided it to the lostwave community in order to prove the authenticity of Fex, and was released on streaming in December 2024.
The fourth live recording was an acoustic performance on NDR 1, performed on November 7, 2024, after the band had been identified and rediscovered. Sievers hadn't joined back Fex at the time, therefore the recording don't have any drums.
The fifth and most recent live recording was recorded at Lutteberker on 14 June 2025,[14] and is the first live performance of the song since at least 1985. Sievers had left Fex by this point, therefore the drums are provided by Hädrich's drum machine.[15]
Radio broadcast
The track list of Darius' BASF 4|1 tape that includes "Subways of Your Mind" (labelled as "Blind the Wind"), and a question mark indicating that the artist was unknown.
A German teenager named Darius S. (from Wilhelmshaven) recorded the song from a German public radio station program in the 1980s.[2][16] He recorded the song on a cassette tape and made a mixtape, which also included songs from XTC and the Cure. To get clean recordings of songs, Darius purposely removed dialogue from the radio hosts, which is likely why the exact airplay date and the title were unknown.[17]
Online search
In 2004, Darius' older sister, Lydia H., bought him a website domain as a birthday present, which he used to raise awareness of the unidentified songs in his collection. He then digitized his radio recordings, saving the songs as .aiff and .m4a files, and uploaded them to his site, named Unknown Pleasures after the 1979 album by English post-punk band Joy Division.[18]
On March 18, 2007, Lydia began her online search for the song on a Usenet group, but later migrated to websites with song identification tools. She posted a 1:15 excerpt of the song to best-of-80s.de (a German forum devoted to eighties synth-pop) and to The Spirit of Radio (a fan site dedicated to Canadian radio station CFNY-FM).[2][16] The song slowly spread across the Internet, being uploaded to WatZatSong in 2009 and to YouTube in 2011. Spanish indie record label Dead Wax Records posted the excerpt of the song to their YouTube channel in 2017. This caught the attention of Gabriel Pelenson, a friend of Dead Wax owner Nicolás Zúñiga, who began searching for the song's origin in 2019.
Pelenson uploaded the excerpt of the song to his YouTube channel and many music-related Reddit communities, and eventually founded r/TheMysteriousSong.[19] Searchers made contact with individuals potentially pertinent to the search, such as NDR disc jockeyPaul Baskerville, German performance rights organizationGEMA, and YouTube channel "80zforever", which posts obscure music.[2] Baskerville agreed to play the song on his then-current radio show Nachtclub on July 21, 2019.[20] Although no new leads came of it, it did make Lydia and Darius aware of the new wave of investigation, and Lydia subsequently became involved with the Reddit community in August.[20]
Theories
Searchers generally agreed that the singer had a European accent, but the specific type was unclear at the time.[16] Some users had theorized that the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, which was released in late 1983, was used in the leads.[20] This was later confirmed by Fex's keyboardist Michael Hädrich.[21]
There had been some speculation that the song was recorded in 1984, since most of the other songs on the cassette tape were released around that time. Further evidence for this is that the Technicstape deck which Darius S. likely used to record the song was manufactured that year.[2]
NDR Radio disc jockey Paul Baskerville, who was approached in 2019 but did not remember playing the song.[16] He suspected that it was a demo recording that was played once by a radio presenter and then thrown away.[22]
One article from March 2021 claimed that the song was likely written and performed by Viennese singer Christian Brandl and drummer Ronnie Urini in 1983, with both German and English versions. The song would have been recorded in the studio of the late Fred Jakesch on Mariahilferstraße in Vienna. Alto saxophonist Heinz Hochrainer said he was present for a planned saxophone element, but that was never recorded. A preliminary mix of the song then would have made its way to a radio station in 1984. Urini corroborated the story and also provided an old typewritten version of the German lyrics as evidence. However, Robert Wolf, Brandl's musical colleague and the frontman of their band Chuzpe, invalidated the argument, saying that he did not recognize Brandl's voice in the song and that the drums sounded more like an electronic drum machine than Urini.[23] Following the discovery of the song's name and band, Urini claimed to the press that the recordings that surfaced were forged by AI, and that he did not want to be further involved with the search.[24]
Viral internet phenomenon
On May 27, 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 for the track and noting that the search was similar to a 2013 search for a song which was ultimately identified as "On the Roof", the English version of "Lämna någonting kvar" by Swedish musician Johan Lindell.[25]
Between 2019 and 2021, American YouTuber Justin Whang posted five episodes of his series Tales from the Internet discussing the song and the progress of the search. His videos further galvanized Internet users to contribute to the effort to identify the song.[16][19]
In addition, a number of covers and remixed versions of the song have been created,[18] including a cover by American band Mephisto Walz titled "Like the Wind" and released on their 2020 album All These Winding Roads.[26]
In March 2023, the song was used in MyHouse.wad, a Doom II mod posted to the Doomworld forums by the pseudonymous user "Veddge". As described in PC Gamer, "you can find it playing from the open door of a lonely car, several layers deep into the inception-style madness that plagues the mod". The song's cryptic nature led it to be widely associated with the "liminal space" internet aesthetic.[27]
Identification and aftermath
On November 4, 2024, Reddit user u/marijn1412 claimed to have identified the song as "Subways of Your Mind" by the German band Fex. While researching bands who participated in Hörfest, an annual event highlighting lesser-known musical artists, the user contacted a Fex band member listed in an issue of the German newspaper Nordwest-Zeitung[de]. According to the user, the band member confirmed that Fex was the creator of the song and planned to re-release it as a result of it being unearthed.[28][29] One member of Fex, Michael Hädrich, confirmed the story to German tabloid tz,[30][31] while the band's lead singer, Ture Rückwardt, participated in an interview with the Kiel newspaper Kieler Nachrichten, further corroborating the story.[32]
On November 7, 2024, three of the four original members of the band, Hädrich, Rückwardt and bassist Norbert Ziermann, performed an acoustic version of the song for the German radio station NDR 1 Welle Nord in Kiel.[33] Sievers had not yet rejoined Fex at the time and was absent from this recording, which does not feature any drums.
The song later made a licensed appearance in the 2025 horror film Black Phone 2; the film is set in 1982[note 3], and an early scene has the character Finney (Mason Thames) watching an episode of the variety series Night Flight, which airs a "Subways of Your Mind" music video.[34]
On October 1, 2025, the band officially released the music video for the song, featuring Darius as a special guest.[35]
Track listing
Studio version
All tracks are written by Ture Rückwardt and Michael Hädrich.
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Subways of Your Mind"
3:53
2.
"Heart in Danger"
4:37
Total length:
8:30
TMMS version
No.
Title
Writer(s)
Length
1.
"Subways of Your Mind (TMMS Version)"
Ture Rückwardt, Michael Hädrich
3:06
2.
"Talking Hands"
Ture Rückwardt
4:04
3.
"Subways of Your Mind (TMMS version) (1st Remaster)"
↑1985 (original studio release) 20 December 2024 (official studio rerelease) 26 December 2024 (official 1985 live performance release) 14 January 2025 (NDR radio version digital release) 14 March 2025 (NDR radio version physical release) 1 October 2025 (official music video release)
↑Also known as "Like the Wind", "The Sun Will Never Shine", "Blind the Wind", "Check It In, Check It Out", "Take It In, Take It Out", and "Summer Blues" after lines in fan-interpreted lyrics. "Subways of Your Mind" was also correctly speculated to be the name. Sometimes referred to as "The Mysterious Song". Often acronymed as LTW, TMMS, TMS and TMMSOTI.
↑Making the appearance of the song anachronic, since the earliest recording of Subways of Your Mind is from June 1984.
↑Michael Hädrich was not present during the Heikendorf rehearsal overall.
123456Böhm, Markus; Kleinz, Torsten (5 November 2024). "Netzrätsel nach Jahren gelöst: Hinter dem »geheimnisvollsten Lied des Internets«steckt eine deutsche Band"[Internet mystery solved after years: A German band was behind the 'most mysterious song on the Internet'.]. Der Spiegel (in German). Retrieved 6 November 2024. Es ist ein historischer Tag. Nicht etwa wegen der US-Wahl. Sondern, weil etwas anderes geschehen ist, das sich für einige Menschen offenbar ähnlich weltbewegend anfühlt: Das Geheimnis um den »most mysterious Song on the Internet«, und damit eines der bekanntesten Netzrätsel überhaupt, ist gelüftet worden. Nach 17 Jahren. [It's a historic day. Not because of the US election. But because something else happened that apparently felt equally earth-shattering to some people: The secret of the 'most mysterious song on the Internet', and thus one of the most famous online mysteries of all time, has been revealed. After 17 years.]
↑Hädrich, Michael (12 November 2024). "1. This will be sort…". r/TheMysteriousSong. Retrieved 14 November 2024.
↑Hädrich, Michael (11 November 2024). "FEX Interview With Michael Hädrich". After Hours Café (Interview). Interviewed by Pete Casiello. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: WRDV.
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