(Image courtesy of CARTIST on Pexels)
The realm of obscure, or even missing media is a vast place. To think something as relatively “simple” as a TV show episode or a whole movie could be missing is such a peculiar circumstance. However, this is much more common than what most people think, because media going missing is nothing new.
The internet just calls it “lost media.”
Lost media is very straight forward. Media that’s lost. Media takes many different forms. Commonly, TV show pilots of kids shows, if the mainstream cases are anything to go by. Think the original “Super Why” pilot, or the current search for “Me And My Friends.” In uncommon occasions, even whole movies have gotten found.
However, one core aspect of lost media that is seemingly overlooked is music.
With how vast music is as an artistic medium, there haven’t been any significant searches in lost music in the grand scheme of the entire lost media community. Compared to searches on various TV shows or bumpers, music is almost a once-in-a-blue-moon search.
But when they do surface, it holds the lost media community in a chokehold until it gets found.
There have been two notable cases of lost music getting found in the past couple years. Both harbored the title of the “most mysterious songs on the internet,” resulting in remastered versions of the songs the internet have been searching for so long. This one even started a mild controversy since its search concluded.
For quite some time, this song was called “Everyone Knows That” (or EKT for short) by the wider internet, but was revealed to be called “Ulterior Motives” later on in the search.
So, how did it get found?
Originally, the song was uploaded to a website called “WatZatSong” on October 7, 2021, but only in a rough 17-second clip. The original poster, “Carl92” claimed to not know where it even came from. His first statement read,
“I don’t remember its origin. I rediscover 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. The thing is it sounds somewhat familiar to me (or maybe I’m mistaken with a similar song) and I thought it wasn’t going to be a too obscure one.”
In discussions of the song excerpt itself, people would comment under it, asking for a longer sample. Others would try to decipher the lyrics to it.
“Everyone Knows That,” or “EKT,” was only uploaded as a 17-second clip. Even then, the clip was hard to listen to. The lyrics were hard to understand, and the instrumental was difficult to pinpoint to a specific source. Some said the 1990’s, others have said the 2000’s, but Carl92 himself said the file of the song that was on his computer was from 1999.
Eventually, it only became the “others” that were invested in the search, as Carl92 would stop replying to speculation regarding EKT, as he seemingly became disinterested in his own search for the song.
During this time, however, the mystery caught on and into the public eye. After years of a lack of progress, the search made it onto Reddit, where its own subreddit was formed specifically for the search in June of 2023.
As the search gained more traction, more people got onto the search. Mostly, from the snippet of EKT going viral on TikTok back in late 2022. For many, this was how they got into lost media. In the Guardian’s words, “users have piled in with unhelpful comments such as: “Have you tried Shazaming it?”, which is the equivalent of telling someone who has lost their keys to check their pockets.”
Eventually, people have begun to take things into their own hands. Since EKT only existed as a 17-second clip, people have started to produce their own covers of the snippet, some even making full on songs, using the various interpretations of the clip.
A point of contention between people in the search for EKT were the lyrics. Before the original writers and producers came forward with the true lyrics, people debated what the lyrics even were, if they were even in English.
Early on in the comments of WatZatSong, various lyric interpretations were made. However, one lyric seemed to be the most consistent among the ones posted,
“Everyone knows that, you got, ulterior motives.”
Alternatively, EKT would be referred to as “Ulterior Motives,” since it was the only thing people could collectively hear in the initial Carl92 recording behind all the strange “crackling” in the recording.
Because of this strange “crackling,” people debated where it would’ve come from, or how it was even recorded. Some said it came from a radio, while sites like the Lostwave Fandom Wiki page said that,
“This audio recording was recorded with a 15.734 kHz pilot tone that was only present in MTV broadcasts exclusive to a selected few countries. 15.734 is also the horizontal frequency of NTSC CRT TVs, meaning that the recording can be captured from a CRT TV tuned to a North American TV station.”
While people were trying to figure out how EKT was recorded, people were trying to figure out who even wrote it.
People were speculating it was from bands and acts ranging from the 1980’s, to the 1990’s, to even the early 2000’s.
- A demo of the song “Stuck” by Prototype, 1988, which was later debunked by the frontman Joe Rinoie himself.
- Something from the band “Off Course.” This was later disproved, simply as people grew attached to other theories and leads.
- A song from the never-released solo album of 60’s girl group singer Dolores “Dee Dee” Kenniebrew that was originally planned to be released in 1987. Someone claimed to have interviewed her and still have contact with her, presumably about the song, but nothing followed up.
- A song from the band Savage Garden. This stemmed from Darren Hayes making a post on Twitter (or “X” as it is now) simply saying “Everyone Knows That”, leading people to think that he was the one behind the song. Turns out, he wasn’t.
All this speculation then came to a halt… when two Reddit users found themselves an interesting lead.
Two Reddit users, U/south_pole_ball and U/One-Truth-5867 (the subreddit’s moderator) worked together to find the lost song.
On April 27, 2024, a song called “Ulterior Motives” was registered on BMI and SOCAN with two names attached: Christopher Saint Booth and his brother, Philip Adrian Booth, who went under the duo name “Who’s Who?” One-Truth-5867 found this out through a song from the movie “Taboo III” that sounded eerily similar to EKT.
Through this discovery, the user would begin to skim through the other movies the Booths had a hand in. Eventually, south_pole_ball would reach out to One-Truth-5867 after they made a post about it on the subreddit, and the two would search the last few remaining films One-Truth-5867 hasn’t seen yet.
Then, they found it.
South_pole_ball reached out to One-Truth-5867 that day, saying they found the song.
This sends the subreddit into a frenzy. Christopher’s Instagram and Facebook were contacted, and the original post of WatZatSong had to be shut down for an hour due to the overwhelm.
So, where was EKT found?
In porn.
Yes, the viral snippet from WatZatSong, the same one that went viral on TikTok and stemmed an entire subreddit to it, dedicated to people finding the search, was called “the most mysterious 17 seconds on the internet” competing with the likes of the ONLY other lost song to reach EKT’s virality, was found in the pornographic film “Angels of Passion.”
It explains the weird creaking in the background of the song, that of which is made by bed action.
It also explained why Carl92 specifically picked THOSE specific 17 seconds to post to WatZatSong. The rest of the song was drowned out by “noises” from the actors…
On Reddit, the reactions were baffling. People paid respects to the two for scouring through porn in order to find this song. The Tiktok audience… not so much.
A small outcry stemmed around the song, merely from all the newer people in the scene shocked that it came from a porno. Some even claim they can’t even listen to the song properly anymore.
However, risque lost media isn’t anything new. Sure, lost media has a reputation of being mostly from kids media, but that doesn’t mean risque or NSFW (not safe for work) lost media doesn’t exist.
Regardless, EKT was found. The twins (Specifically Christopher Saint Booth) responded to the overwhelming interest in the obscure song he made from a porno back in 1986 suddenly gaining traction with an Instagram post, saying,
“Well today, my mind has officially been blown. WOW!”
This was accompanied by hashtags like #ulteriormotives and #ekt, alongside the pink CD player that EKT related posts were paired alongside with.
(Image courtesy of “gettheseclothes” on Depop of all places from 6 years ago. The CD player specifically is a 2006 Nexplay Glitz and Glitter CD player. This CD player has since been sold on their page.)
After his post got enough traction, “Who’s Who?” returned to produce and release an album on June 23, 2024. This was called “The Lost Album.”
The Lost Album consisted of a lot of tracks that the brothers made during their movie soundtrack days, when they would “do anything” for money… Including making music for adult films, which was what Ulterior Motives was for.
And oh, yeah! Ulterior Motives is the official name of the song.
Furthermore, the one lyric “everyone knows that” turned out to be “everyone knows it.” This was revealed through the remastered version of EKT for the album.
So, over the course of a few years, there were countless lost leads, and the community got the people behind the song to remaster the song, along with a bunch of other music from the Booth brothers’ catalog.
All this, over a single background song from a 1980’s porno.
This is an incredible testament to the internet’s curiosity. Lost media is something that just scratches that itch, to devote time to find something that some may find arbitrary, but is art to the wider internet.
The internet is truly a remarkable place.
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