Online search
On 7 October 2021, user carl92 uploaded a 17-second snippet of the song to WatZatSong and asked for help identifying it. He wrote that he "rediscover[ed] this sample between a bunch of very old files in a DVD backup. Probably I was simply learning how to capture audio and this was a left over." [14] The song was thought to have been recorded in the 1980s due to its stylistic similarities to pop music of that time, specifically after 1983, since the LinnDrum drum machine and the Yamaha DX7 synthesiser were thought by the sleuths to have been used in the song. [7] [15] Some users created reconstructions from the original snippet to have an idea of what the full song could be like, while others theorised that the song was a hoax "planted by a troll". [14] It became WatZatSong's "most infamous and enduring submission", receiving the most comments since its launch in 2006. [14]
The song gained popularity online in late 2022 and 2023, and a subreddit dedicated to finding the song and its artist was launched in June 2023. [3] On 7 January 2024, two members of the subreddit were interviewed by French commercial TV network TF1. [16]
The search for the song was initially slow to gain traction, but gained a dedicated following over time. [3] Search participants theorised that the source for the song might be a 1990s MTV broadcast, a piece of production music, or a commercial jingle. [3] In August 2023, user u/HeyScarlett found a registered song by the name "Ulterior Motives" in Canadian music database SOCAN under the shareholders' names "Booth Christopher David" and "Booth Philip". [13] [17]
Discovery
On 28 April 2024, following a lead from Reddit user u/One-Truth-5867 who had found a similar sounding song by the same artist, user u/south_pole_ball identified the song, including its name and artists. [18] [19] The snippet was discovered to be from the 1986 pornographic film Angels of Passion. [13] The users followed HeyScarlett's previous lead from the SOCAN database. [7] From there, they discovered that Christopher Booth was a prolific songwriter for pornographic films and watched his repertoire of films until they found Angels of Passion, which features the song. [18]
On 29 April 2024, Booth publicly made an Instagram post regarding the discovery of the song's source and the artists. [20] He later uploaded a reel showcasing the original lyrics for the song within his recording studio, revealing that the original lyrics were "everyone knows it" instead of "everyone knows that". [21] In a CBC News podcast, Booth claimed that the song was not written exclusively for the film. [22] [23] On 1 May 2024, in a Rolling Stone interview, Booth revealed plans to release a new album with songs similar to "Ulterior Motives"; he had already found the song's original "rhythm track" but not the vocal track. [5] Several days later, he gave an interview with a Redditor, in which he clarified that he located the guitar, bass, and drum tracks, but not the original vocal or synth tracks. [24] In another interview the Booth brothers conducted on 15 May, Christopher stated that he believed the rest of the masters for "Ulterior Motives" to be in the possession of his recently deceased friend, whose niece had planned to send the Booths a box of masters once in the possession of her relative. [25] On 7 June 2024, when responding to a Redditor asking if the vocal track was indeed in that box of masters, Christopher confirmed that the masters had arrived and that he had located other songs from them, but not the vocal track, which he would re-record along with the guitar track. [26]
On 19 June 2024, the Booth brothers released a trailer for Ulterior Motives - The Lost Album, showcasing their new version of "Ulterior Motives". [27] The album was finally released on all streaming platforms on 23 June 2024, under the name Ulterior Motives (The Lost Album) . In an Instagram Q&A conducted on 29 June, Christopher confirmed that parts of a rough mixdown of the original "Ulterior Motives" were used in the remake; however, the full tape could not be released due to suffering from dropouts. [28]
