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Mystery Song Previously Known as 'Everyone Knows That' Finally Identified, Discovered in a Decidedly NSFW Location

The song is actually entitled 'Ulterior Motives' and was found in - ahem! - an adult film

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Source: YouTube / JackIsGiant

The boombox that famously played the previously-unknown song.

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Everybody loves a mystery, particularly when it's a good one, but at a certain point even the best of mysteries can become a source of frustration if you can't solve it. That's where things were headed with the unidentified song dubbed "Everyone Knows That," which - as detailed in the 2019 Rolling Stone article "The Unsolved Case of the Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" - was ostensibly taped while being played on the radio at some point in the mid-1980s and has been the subject of online speculation since 2007, when the sister of the person who taped it got fed up with not knowing the song's title or the artist who performed it.

Since then, this less-than-stellar recording of this so-called "Lostwave" song has made the internet rounds more times than anyone would ever waste time counting, and the end result has always been the same: no one was able to identify it. Yet the more devout - some would say obsessive - searchers refused to give up their quest to find out the identify of the artist.

At long last, the answer has been discovered: the song is called "Ulterior Motives," it was recorded by Christopher Saint Booth and Philip Adrian Booth, and it was found in - of all places - an adult film from 1986 called Angels of Passion.

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Source: archive.org / No2elu

'What's the classiest font you've got? This one? Perfect!' The title card for the film that introduced the world to 'Ulterior Motives.'

The answer to the long-gestating mystery made its debut in the same place where a good percentage of the conversation about the song had taken place: on Reddit.

Here's the post by Reddit user One-Truth-5867 where the solution was formally announced:

Ulterior Motives has officially been found in an adult film. u/south_pole_ball made the discovery with me, after I found a lead earlier this morning which directed us straight to the artist of the song.

Here is what happened:

I found a video on YouTube of a scene from an adult movie that had a song which sounded very similar to EKT.

I noticed in the description of the video that it said Christopher Saint Booth and Philip Adrian Booth

I realized “HOLY SH*T” I remember these names!! They are in BMI and SOCAN with a registry for “Ulterior Motives”.

I skimmed over 12 hours last night alone through films and found similar sounding music, with claps, vocals, and even some duo singing artists. I also found other songs made by Chris and Philip in this timeframe.

I told the lead to other people and other mods after feeling exhausted from searching for 12 hours already. u/south_pole_ball immediately began communicating with me through DM’s and we were soon skimming through all the artist’s remaining movies they were featured in simultaneously, communicating back and fourth with each film debunking it.

I went AFK for 5 minutes to watch a film and compare two different names (Philip O’toole and Philip Booth, which were the same person), and came back to a flood of messages from u/south_pole_ball that the song has been found in a movie that he had just watched. He only watched a few films before finding it.

I could’ve kept it a secret and found EKT myself, but I didn’t want to do that. I think I have enough credit already haha. :)

I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped out in the search!!! I am shaking typing all this!!! We are just shy of hitting 40,000 members haha.

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Source: archive.org / No2elu

This is literally the only screenshot we can comfortably post from the scene where "Ulterior Motives" is played.

If you're interested in hearing this mysterious song in its entirety, you can do so via the embed below. If you're interested in watching the film where the song appears...

Yeah, well, we're not offering you that link. But we will tell you that it's floating out there on the Internet Archive, so...now it's your turn to do some research.

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