Everyone on the internet is grabbing their sleuthing caps to solve the mystery behind a 17-second snippet of a pop song.
For years, people around the world have been trying to identify a song presumably from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s that has come to be known as "Everyone Knows That (Ulterior Motives)."
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The mystery stretches back to 2021, when a user named Carl92 from Spain uploaded a scratchy snippet to the website Watzatsong, a platform that helps users identify a song title and artist, according to a Reddit forum devoted to theories about the song.
"Carl92 uploaded a 17-second clip with the words 'Mid 80s, bad quality.' The snippet revealed an incredibly catchy earworm but no one seemed to recognize it," the forum explains.
Carl92 wrote that he found the song "between a bunch of very old files in a DVD backup" from 1999. He explained: "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)."
After two months with no answers, Carl92 left the website. Two years later, the same snippet went viral on the internet, attracting thousands of people looking for it, yet little is known about the song, according to Reddit.
So far, there have been no solid leads to the song's origin.
A redditor known as "cotton–underground," who moderates the forum, explained the obsession to Rolling Stone.
"On one hand, it's an incredibly catchy and recognizable tune, while on the other hand loaded with mystery," he said. "With everything digitized and music freely available, it's probably very interesting to a lot of young people that this song is seemingly untraceable."
Some have theorized the song was used in a TV show, advertisement jingle or made for a movie and was never commercially released. Other theories tying the song to popular artists have been debunked by the artists themselves.
Even the lyrics are up for debate, though most people seem to hear:
"You carry all the shame in disguise
Caught up in a world of lies
Everyone knows that you've got
Ulterior motives
Tell me the truth
Every move shows..."
For now, the case remains unsolved.
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