Mysterious viral song that baffled the internet for years is finally identified - and its origins are more bizarre than anyone could have imagined

It was lost but never truly forgotten - and now, clever song sleuths have figured out where a decades-old earworm has come from.

The catchy 80s tune, known online as Everyone Knows That, drove internet users and music lovers wild after it was uploaded to YouTube years ago - sans artist.

After years of unsuccessful searching, the song was finally identified as Ulterior Motives by Christopher David Booth, after the tune investigator noticed it was featured in a 1986 adult movie.

According to Reddit, a 17-second snippet of it was uploaded back in 2021 by the user 'Carl92' on the site WatZatSong.com, sparking a mega-search for mystery bop.

The catchy 80s tune, known online as Everyone Knows That, drove internet users and music lovers wild after it was uploaded to YouTube years ago - sans artist. A picture of a pink CD player has become synonymous with the lost track

The Reddit user who got to the bottom of the mystery goes by south_pole_ball, bravely delved into some porn to help the wider community (stock image)

Simply describing the song as: 'Mid 80s, Bad quality. (Everyone Knows That),' it kicked off a world-wide internet search for the catchy bop.

'Rediscovered 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 user wrote along with the song's upload. 

The Subreddit r/everyoneknowsthat, which has over 55,000 members, eventually got to the bottom of the tune - and the lost song was identified as Ulterior Motives by Christopher David Booth.

The Reddit user who got to the bottom of the mystery goes by south_pole_ball and bravely delved into some porn to help the wider community.

'I went through each video and watched them, until I found Angels of Passion (1986). To which I got to 1:07:31 and I found EKT,' the user explained.

'To continue, after following One-Truth's lead of Christopher Saint Booth. Christopher Booth created music for pornographic films.'

'I believe the song to be called Ulterior Motives by Christopher David Booth,' the user shared.

It was a treacherous journey to get there, with guesses including lost a Savage Garden track, with others unsure about the origins of the song.

The user said he 'went through each video and watched them, until I found Angels of Passion (1986)' (stock image)

'EKT is a European song,' a user argued. 'Everyone talks about how a Japanese singer seems to be covering the song or the song is Japanese. But I believe that it is European. I grew up in Europe and remember especially when I was very young that generic pop songs like this would always be on the radio. '

Some other invested users suggested that maybe the sound had featured on a advertisement or background music in a TV show and had been recorded to a VHS and eventually uploaded on a third party sites like Napster, a file sharing site primarily associated with digital audio file distribution.

'Obviously no evidence here but remembering those days, I used to record songs off a radio or off VHS tapes or the television onto both tape players and my own crappy computer just for fun.

'I played around recording audio back then like Carl92, onto Windows Sound Recorder (and the quality was terrible). I still remember the crappy, long off-white desk standing microphone I would use,' a user wrote.

'It was pretty well known how unreliable filenames were [on sites like Napster] and how you'd download stuff and just not know what it was,' they pointed out.

Other users hypothesized Carl92, who originally posted the sample in 2021, was the creator behind the tune and was responsible for making sure it got everyone's attention.

'Carl92 made the song and never completed it so, he did a clever marketing stunt to gain popularity or for other people to make the rest of his song for him,' a Reddit user guessed.

However, the mystery had a satisfying ending with the news making it's way back to Christopher Booth himself, who confirmed he did make the tune - and was thrilled with his 2024 recognition. 

'Well today, my mind has officially been blown,' he wrote on Instagram, alongside the image of the CD player that has become associated with the song. 'Wow.'