"Subways of Your Mind" is a song by the German new wave band Fex, recorded in 1984. In 1985, a demo cassette tape with the song was released to help promote the band's live tour in Northern and Central Germany. The tape was mainly sold during the tour. On March 18, 2007, a cassette recording from a radio broadcast in the mid-1980s was uploaded online and received a lot of attention. The song remained unknown for many years, leading to a 17-year search to find the artist and song title. During this time, the song became known as "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet."
The song was recorded privately in Wilhelmshaven from a radio broadcast in the mid-1980s, possibly in 1984. In 2019, the song became the subject of a popular online search, with users on websites like Reddit and Discord working together to identify it.
On November 4, 2024, the song was identified by Reddit user u/marijn1412 as "Subways of Your Mind" by Fex, a rock band from Kiel. This was confirmed when a 1985 EP containing a studio version of the song and a live recording from the same year were released. On January 12, 2025, the daughter of the band's keyboardist, Michael Hädrich, shared on Reddit that her father had found a cassette copy of the NDR version played on German radio around 1984. This copy was released as a digital single the next day. However, the original master tape containing this version has not yet been found. On November 4, a higher-quality version of the NDR broadcast was discovered in the lead singer Ture Rückwardt's archives and uploaded to Bandcamp, including an extended fadeout.
"Subways of Your Mind" is one of the most famous examples of lostwave, a term used to describe music with obscure or unknown origins.
Composition
In an interview shortly after the song was discovered, Fex's keyboardist, Michael Hädrich, described the song's inspiration and meaning:
Ture, the composer, would best explain this, but I know his perspective. The song reflects the "no future" feeling of that time, which was during the Cold War in the 1980s. People believed that a nuclear war might eventually occur, as someone could press a button to start it. This atmosphere influenced parts of the song, such as the lines about "the sun will never shine." However, the song also includes positive lines about "the young and restless dreamers." These contrasting elements—sadness and hope—create a unique quality that makes the song appealing. Additionally, the song's simple style helps convey its mood effectively.
— Michael Hädrich, After Hours Café, WRDV
Recordings
There are three known studio recordings of the song "Subways of Your Mind." The first recording was made in June 1984, about a month before the NDR version, in a practice room building in Heikendorf. This recording has lower sound quality compared to later versions because it was recorded using a microphone near a bass amplifier and because of the time it took to make it. The bassist for this recording was Jörg Lemcke, who also made the recording. Michael Hädrich was not present during this rehearsal and did not play on this version.
The second recording of the song was made between the rehearsal and the studio sessions. It was once thought to have been released in 1983 with Volker Schenk, the bassist who was in the band before Lemcke, due to his memory and a claim about a vinyl release. However, Jörg Lemcke later proved this was false, explaining that the song was first created and rehearsed after Volker had already left the band to join a jazz group. On April 8, 2026, new information confirmed that Lemcke was the bassist for this recording. It was also confirmed that an Ibanez Jazz Bass was used during this session. Before this discovery, it was believed the bassist might have been either Rückwardt or Lemcke. This version, called the "NDR recording" by fans, was made in a room called "Löffel studio," a name used by Hase, the band’s sound engineer, to describe any place where he kept his mixing equipment. The session actually took place in the same practice room as the rehearsal. This version was played on NDR, though the band does not know how it was broadcast. The intro on this recording is shorter than the other two, and it ends with a fade-out. One copy includes the beginning of a new keyboard part. According to Hädrich, each copy of the song had a unique fade-out.
The third and final professional studio recording, which appears on the band’s 1985 EP sold during their tour, was made in November 1984 at Hawkeye Studios in Ganderkesee. It was produced by Jeff Burke and mixed by Hase. This version keeps the longer intro and ending from the Heikendorf recording and includes the keyboard parts from the NDR version, which were further developed. The bassist for this recording was Norbert Ziermann. The lyrics in all three recordings have small differences.
Five live recordings of the song are known to exist because the band recorded their concerts to review their performances and improve. Only three of these have been made public so far.
The first live recording was made on June 9, 1984, during a performance in a showroom called Lutterbeker. It features the same lineup as the Heikendorf rehearsal, but Rückwardt’s wife, Ilona, sings backing vocals, and Michael Hädrich plays keyboard. This recording was found in Rückwardt’s collection of tapes, which have not yet been released.
The second live recording was made on March 20, 1985, during a performance in Uelzen. It features the same lineup as the 1984 studio recording. This recording is planned to be released in May 2026.
The third live recording was made on May 25, 1985, at the Roxy in Paderborn. The lineup here matches the previous performance. This was the first recording to be shared online after Hädrich gave it to the lostwave community to prove the band’s authenticity. It was released on streaming platforms in December 2024.
The fourth live recording was an acoustic performance on NDR 1 on November 7, 2024, after the band was rediscovered. At this time, Sievers had not yet joined Fex, and the recording does not include drums.
The fifth and most recent live recording was made on June 14, 2025, at Lutterbeker. This is the first live performance of the song since at least 1985. By this time, Sievers had already left Fex, and the drums were played using Hädrich’s drum machine.
Radio broadcast
A German teenager named Darius S. from Wilhelmshaven recorded a song from a German public radio station program in the 1980s. He used a cassette tape to record the song and created a mixtape that included songs from XTC and the Cure. To make the recordings clearer, Darius intentionally removed the voices of the radio hosts. This action likely caused the exact date the song was played and its title to remain unknown.
Later, Fex found that the song was likely broadcast in early September 1984. However, Fex did not know which radio show it was played on or how it was included in the NDR program.
Online search
In 2004, Darius' older sister, Lydia H., gave him a website domain as a birthday gift. He used the site to share information about songs in his collection that had unknown origins. He converted his radio recordings into digital files, such as .aiff and .m4a, and uploaded them to the site, which he named "Unknown Pleasures" after the 1979 album by the English post-punk band Joy Division.
On March 18, 2007, Lydia began searching for the song online by posting a 1:15 clip of it on a Usenet group. She later moved to websites with tools that help identify songs. She shared the clip on best-of-80s.de, a German forum focused on 1980s synth-pop, and on The Spirit of Radio, a fan site for the Canadian radio station CFNY-FM. The song gradually spread online, appearing on WatZatSong in 2009 and YouTube in 2011. In 2017, the Spanish indie record label Dead Wax Records uploaded the clip to their YouTube channel. This caught the attention of Gabriel Pelenson, a friend of Dead Wax's owner, Nicolás Zúñiga, who started searching for the song's origin in 2019.
Pelenson uploaded the clip to his YouTube channel and shared it on several music-related Reddit communities. He later created the Reddit group r/TheMysteriousSong. Searchers reached out to people who might have information, such as NDR disc jockey Paul Baskerville, the German performance rights organization GEMA, and the YouTube channel "80zforever," which shares obscure music. Baskerville agreed to play the song on his radio show, Nachtclub, on July 21, 2019. Although no new clues were found, this event made Lydia and Darius aware of renewed interest in the search. Lydia joined the Reddit community in August 2019.
Searchers generally believed the singer had a European accent, but they were unsure of the exact type. Some users guessed that the Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, released in 1983, was used for the song's lead sounds. This was later confirmed by Michael Hädrich, the keyboardist of the band Fex.
Some people thought the song was recorded in 1984 because other songs on the cassette tape were released around that time. Additional evidence supports this theory, as the Technics tape deck Darius likely used to record the song was made in 1984.
In 2019, Paul Baskerville was asked about the song but did not remember playing it. He thought it might have been a demo recording played once by a radio presenter and then discarded.
An article from March 2021 suggested the song was written and performed by Viennese singer Christian Brandl and drummer Ronnie Urini in 1983, with both German and English versions. The song may have been recorded in the studio of Fred Jakesch on Mariahilferstraße in Vienna. Alto saxophonist Heinz Hochrainer said he was present for a planned saxophone part, but it was never recorded. A preliminary mix of the song might have been sent to a radio station in 1984. Urini supported this story and shared an old typewritten version of the German lyrics as proof. However, Robert Wolf, Brandl's musical colleague and the frontman of their band Chuzpe, said he did not recognize Brandl's voice in the song and noted the drums sounded more like an electronic drum machine than Urini's style. After the song's name and band were discovered, Urini told reporters the recordings were likely made by AI and stated he did not want to be involved further in the search.
Viral internet phenomenon
On May 27, 2019, an Australian music news website called Tone Deaf published the first article about the song. The writer, Tyler Jenke, explained how the search for the track began and compared it to a similar search in 2013 that found a song called "On the Roof," which is the English version of "Lämna någonting kvar" by Swedish musician Johan Lindell.
From 2019 to 2021, an American YouTuber named Justin Whang made five videos for his series Tales from the Internet about the song and the progress of the search. His videos encouraged more people online to help find the song.
Also, several covers and remixed versions of the song were created. One example is a cover by the American band Mephisto Walz called "Like the Wind," which was included on their 2020 album All These Winding Roads.
In March 2023, the song was used in MyHouse.wad, a Doom II mod shared on the Doomworld forums by a user who goes by the name "Veddge." As described in PC Gamer, the song plays from the open door of a lonely car deep inside the strange, layered world of the mod. The song’s mysterious qualities made it closely linked to the "liminal space" internet aesthetic, which focuses on eerie or in-between places.
Identification and aftermath
On November 4, 2024, a Reddit user named u/marijn1412 said they found the song "Subways of Your Mind" by the German band Fex. While looking into bands that took part in Hörfest, an event that highlights unknown musical artists, the user reached out to a Fex member listed in the German newspaper Nordwest-Zeitung [de]. The user reported that the band member confirmed Fex created the song and planned to re-release it after it was found. Michael Hädrich, a member of Fex, confirmed the story to the German tabloid tz. The band’s lead singer, Ture Rückwardt, also spoke with the Kiel newspaper Kieler Nachrichten, supporting the story.
On November 7, 2024, three of the four original members of Fex—Hädrich, Rückwardt, and bassist Norbert Ziermann—performed an acoustic version of the song for the German radio station NDR 1 Welle Nord in Kiel. The fourth member, Sievers, had not yet returned to the band and was not part of this recording, which does not include drums.
The song later appeared in the 2025 horror film Black Phone 2. The film is set in 1982, and an early scene shows the character Finney (played by Mason Thames) watching an episode of the variety show Night Flight, which features a music video for "Subways of Your Mind."
On October 1, 2025, the band officially released the music video for the song, which includes Darius as a special guest.