A three-year crowdsourced search for the origins of a 17-second music clip is over after lost media sleuths finally found the original source of a song known as “Everyone Knows That” — and it’s a pornographic film.
In 2021, a user called carl92 uploaded a short clip of an 80s-style pop tune to song identification website WatZatSong, seeking help from other users in finding its source. He said in the forum that he found the sample collecting digital dust among files on a DVD backup, and that he was learning how to capture audio “and this was a left over.”
This is the original snippet, via Wikipedia:
The snippet proved so hard to find that more lost media enthusiasts joined the effort, and an entire subreddit launched in June 2023 dedicated to finding “Everyone Knows That.” Long story short, a Reddit user called One-Truth found that the producer was likely Christopher Saint Booth, who recorded music for pornos in the 1980s.
Redditor south_pole_ball valiantly scrubbed through each porno with music produced by Booth, until they found the 1986 film Angels of Passion. One hour and seven minutes into the film, there was “Everyone Knows That.” The song’s real name is “Ulterior Motives.” The film stars Steve Drake, Tracey Adams, and Jessica Wylde in a plot where angels “are sent back to Earth to provide some sexual satisfaction to the mortal humans,” according to IMDB. If you want to see it for yourself, you’re in luck: it’s on xHamster. The song accompanies a doggy-style scene set in front of a giant Coca-Cola sign.
Several safe-for-work versions are online now, without all the moaning:
Carl92 himself has become a meme in the r/everyoneknowsthat subreddit, now that we know he got the clip from a porn flick. There have been many theories over the years about where carl92 initially recorded the song; guesses have included a 90’s MTV broadcast, commercial jingles, or generic muzak. And as the mystery got more popular, it became difficult to sort the real attempts at locating the origins from people trying to troll the effort. “It was fun to have hope, but as of late, the hoaxes have gotten so common, it’s becoming increasingly more and more disruptive to the search,” a moderator for the r/everyoneknowsthat subreddit told Rolling Stone in 2023. The clip proved so hard to find, people started wondering if the entire thing was a hoax.
Someone on Tiktok who claims to be Booth posted yesterday about the discovery with the caption “Wow.... Mind is blown...Thank you. Shall we release it?”
@christophersaintb Shall we release it? #ulteriormotives #ekt
♬ Ekt lost song - Ria(madonnas version)🎀
“I know people are divided on how they feel about EKT being found in an adult film, but I think it perfectly concludes this beautiful story that was filled with comedy to begin with,” one of the subreddit’s early moderators, cotton--underground, wrote after the song’s source was discovered. “Any other ending would not have fitted it as good as this one. It shows you the beauty of the internet. Thousands upon thousands of people coming together to find a background song in a throwaway, obscure, vintage porn video.”
