The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet – ARD documentary

It began with a cassette tape and a moment of missed detail. In the early 1980s, a teenager in Wilhelmshaven named Darius recorded a track from the radio—an obscure New Wave song that caught his ear. He didn’t catch the title or the band, and for decades, that simple omission remained unresolved. But the internet had other plans. As his sister Lydia uploaded the clip to an online forum years later, the unknown song began to circulate and grip the imaginations of thousands, morphing into what’s now known as The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet.

The new ARD documentary of the same name follows the sprawling, obsessive, and ultimately collaborative hunt for the song’s origin. Through re-enactments, archival footage, and interviews with the protagonists and internet sleuths who took the mystery global, the film becomes a reflection on memory, the reach of digital culture, and the sheer tenacity of music fans. Why did this one track—melancholic, synth-driven, anonymous—capture so much attention? And what does it say about the way we connect through mystery?

In a remarkable final chapter, the search culminated in late 2024 with the identification of the song as a long-forgotten recording by FEX, a little-known band from northern Germany. Four decades after its first broadcast, the group re-recorded the track, bringing long-awaited closure to a quest that had become part of internet folklore.

The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet airs is available now in the ARD Mediathek and at ardkultur.de.

We represent this song worldwide.

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