The Most Mysterious Song On The Internet.

[full_metal_ox]

Watch on YouTube

For no other reason than because I think it’s cool and want to share, having been among the Lucky 10,000 this spring: presenting “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet”, AKA “Like the Wind”, “Blind the Wind”, “Check It In, Check It Out”, “The Consequence of Living”, and “Summer Moon” among others.

This song, purportedly taped circa 1984 from a West German radio broadcast, has been making the online rounds since 2019–and has stubbornly defied all attempts to establish provenance; part of its captivating oddness comes from the singer’s stern metallic baritone, heavy accent, and melismatic vocal styling unusual for Western pop music of the period.

Furthering the song’s mystery is the tantalizing half-intelligibility of the lyrics, resisting resolution and encouraging open interpretation; even the title is an individual judgment call. It has the air of an artifact captured from a parallel universe.

Nor does it hurt that it’s a 24-karat banger.

Comments

[med_cat]

Cool :)

[full_metal_ox]

How much, if anything, do you know about the full context, which I’d been meaning to add to the post (as also with my 25 May post)?

[med_cat]

Nothing, really, other than what I saw in the info about the video on YouTube, underneath the video.

[full_metal_ox]

One detail I find particularly riveting is the melismatic vocal styling—a mannerism not characteristic of either Anglo-diasporic or (what I know of) German rock music in the 1980’s, which contributes to the song’s just-where-the-heck-are-we-in-Musicland mystery, along with the singer’s stern metallic baritone and heavy accent and the tantalizing half-indeterminate lyrics.

(Western musicians using it are frequently playing with orientalism; the first example that comes to my mind is Madonna on “Frozen.”) You, of course, are familiar with musical cultures and genres that I’m not, so I’ll defer to your wider-ranging tastes.)

A tentative hypothesis: I wonder whether anyone’s considered the possibility that the singer was ethnic Turkish—Germany has plenty of those.

[med_cat]

Very interesting, thanks :)