Woah I Wish I Could See Your Face Again

It'due south pretty common in music circles to run across people who accept spent literally decades trying to place an obscure vocal on an old mixtape. They've had no luck Googling lyrics or playing the song into Soundhound, Shazam, or friends' ears. There are entire communities—on websites like Wat Zat Song?, Midomi, and Reddit—devoted to crowdsourcing the solutions.

Many times, without what felt similar much work, I've been able to successfully ID such songs for strangers. Not because I'm Brainypants McMusicface; to the contrary. In every instance these take been songs and artists I'd never heard (or even heard of) earlier.

Simply the recordings independent the necessary clues and context, to which I applied some deductive reasoning and research done on freely-available websites. Here's how I've gone about information technology, in case crowdsourcing isn't working for you.

1 example: Slicing Up Eyeballs posted this to both Facebook and Twitter.

Can you lot ID this funky postal service-punk song taped off WNYU in the '80s?

A Slicing Up Eyeballs reader sent us the following notation:

"I write from Germany so sorry if i put words incorrect. A Friend of mine was in America in the 80s and he listened to WNYU – FM. He heard a Song in that location but did not hear the Name and Artist. So i have the Link here where you can listen to. If yous don`t know information technology, mayhap you can aid us with the Lyrics. We went them up and downwards with no Consequence. Particularly after the outset words "Oh well oh welcome ….. This might be the Refrain of the Song because he repeats it frequently in this Song. I would exist very glad to get an reply from y'all because this Song is searched for more than 33 Years."

The mail was accompanied by the song's audio on Soundcloud (and had already been an open instance on Wat Zat Song? for over five months).

1. Examine the audio and lyrics for clues, and search for keywords on Discogs.

Discogs is a website database detailing musical artists' discographies and, among other features (like its marketplace and the ability to catalog your entire music drove), it'southward a powerful search engine. The Advanced Search, which is complimentary to apply without creating an account, allows you to await only inside Track (song) Title.

Since this vocal didn't have a traditional chorus (where the championship would usually echo), I started making out the lyrics from the elevation.

Oh well, oh welcome [turncoat?] Sam
He said he was a killer man
He doesn't intendance about your [dearest / life]

Then something about napalm? Sounds a bit agit-prop. That first line repeats at the beginning of each poesy, giving at least office of it the potential to appear in the championship. A Track Title search for "oh well oh welcome" yielded 44 results which contained some combination of those keywords in their song titles (i.e. "oh", "well" and "welcome" might appear in three unlike vocal titles on a given album, not necessarily all in the same song title).

2. Filter the search results to items released in a specific decade, geographic region, or genre.

The OP said the tape was from the '80s and the recording screams '80s equally well. Choosing Decade>1980 from the card downwards the left side of the search window narrows it down from 44 to seven.

As for genre, would Discogs have this filed nether punk, funk, other? Those distinctions are subjective, which is why I opted not to use their filters for this pace and instead eliminated results that obviously weren't the genre I was looking for (i.e. skip over the items with "gospel" and "soul" in the titles, as well as the "Hot Hits" compilation. If this song had ever been a hot hit, someone would have identified it past now). That left me with only ane result to investigate:Maxi Dance Puddle Vol. 2 – Musikladen Eurotops.

NB: Discogs, due to the way its records are structured, returned three unlike iterations of this same album in the search results: one beingness the 'master folio' for that release/album and the other 2 detailing the separate formats of the release, CD and LP. All 3 are interchangeable for my purposes, then no need to look at each.

3. Use streaming music resources to follow leads.

Given that my keywords were spread across 2 track titles on this compilation—"Oh Well" (past an artist of the same proper name), and another titled "Welcome, Car Gun"—and that my song hardly seemed similar gild fodder, this was probably a dead end but I was already here and decided to see it through. The former title was a better lucifer to my lyric than the latter so I followed the hyperlink to the Discogs page showing Oh Well's discography. The vocal "Oh Well", since information technology was released every bit a single, had its own subpage with an embedded YouTube video, a quick scan of which proved information technology wasn't the vocal I was subsequently.

"Automobile gun" didn't appear in the lyrics of my song, and then it seemed illogical to assume that the latter song had whatsoever relevance to my search. Dorsum to the drawing lath.

four. Repeat steps ane-3 equally needed.

I didn't bother pursuing the words "oh well" whatsoever farther because, on their own, they simply didn't experience distinctive or interesting enough to exist a title for this song. Instead, I turned my sights to "turncoat Sam." Few writers would be able to resist making such a unique plough of phrase the hook on which to hang a song, so it had a better take a chance of appearing in the title. Merely that search yielded only ii results, which were quickly ruled out. Boosted searches for "turncoat" and "welcome turncoat" were similarly fruitless.

Out of other options, I searched for "Sam". Filtering down to just the '80s withal left about 2700 releases. Scanning the kickoff folio of 50 results, I eliminated anything immediately recognizable (e.g. T. Rex's "Telegram Sam"), the foreign language items, the ones obviously in non-applicative genres like jazz, and ones in which Sam was inextricably paired with other words ("Play It Again, Sam", etc.).

At the bottom of the page my eye was drawn to a dark, arty tape cover that seemed to fit the vibe I was looking for—what looked like a monoprint of a face up that was disjointed, disfigured, with violence or chaos implied.

It was for a single of a song called "Uncle Sam" by a grouping I'd never heard of, Rhythm of Life. Clicking through to that subpage showed that it was a UK release from 1981, classified equally New Moving ridge. On this type of page, Discogs displays suggestions of similar artists; while I wasn't intimately familiar with the ones listed here (Josef Thousand, Cabaret Voltaire), I knew enough to think they were reasonably aligned with my target.

I searched YouTube for "Rhythm of Life Uncle Sam," which returned one outcome; after a brief drum intro that was missing from the original post, there was my song. It wasn't "turncoat Sam" after all… it was "Oh well, oh welcome to Uncle Sam", with "to" and "Uncle" sung and then close together equally to sound similar one word.

[Editor's annotation: that video used to be embedded right here and so that yous could hear it, just has since been removed from YouTube and non replaced. In fact, Rhythm of Life'southward "Uncle Sam" appears not to be bachelor on whatsoever legitimate streaming service—or for digital download—in the U.s., and tin can simply be found on a 2-CD Paul Haig compilation from Brussels-based Les Disques du Crépuscule label. And that fact, dear reader—that the web giveth and the web taketh abroad—is a perfect example of why I always view my personal music library as more essential and comprehensive than any subscription-based streaming service can hope to be.]

To exist fair, intuition played a office in arriving at the solution, equally did good luck; if my song had appeared on the 50th page of "Sam" results instead of the offset, would I have plant it? (Not to mention other factors in my favor: that the song had lyrics at all, was sung in my native language, was from an era and genre of which I have a decent if not comprehensive knowledge, etc.) Still, this method has helped me solve half a dozen other mystery songs that had been plaguing people for 25+ years, where collective "Well, it kind of sounds similar [artist name here]" guesswork failed.

Here's one more instance off the height of my head, using the aforementioned steps—identifying the audio clues, lyrical clues, and parameters for the search.

Instance #2

Audio clues: a vocal taped off an American alt radio station in 1988. The artist sounded American, slightly roots-rockish only with sonic polish, and a chip Paisley Underground.

Lyrical clues: a mention of Jerry Falwell bolstered my notion that it's American in origin. Focusing on the closest thing to a chorus, the only lyrics which repeat are variations of:

Whatever proper noun y'all become by, she goes by now too
What else would she practise?
She's got her last resorts in the mail
To box three five comma oh oh oh

The search: the concluding line was the best bet. The number 35,000 spoken in that fashion, every bit its individual components, was so unusual that it took a while to realize that's what I was hearing, as opposed to the oh-oh-ohs but beingness vocal punctuations. Being catchy and unique, information technology was the most obvious claw. And radio being a contemporary medium, the song was probably either released in '87 or '88; songs by and large don't get airplay years later on their release unless they've achieved some status. Searching Discogs in two fields—Track Championship for "35,000", and Year for 1987—took me straight to information technology: "35,000" past Insiders, from an album called Ghost On the Beach.

I'm not surprised it eluded someone for decades; it was a deep album cut, not a unmarried, and it's non on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes or Amazon. I had to runway information technology down on (now-defunct) Grooveshark in social club to verify its identity.

Example #3, without audio

Again, Slicing Upwards Eyeballs posted a reader's plea on Facebook.

NAME THAT TUNE: Scott'southward having trouble tracking down a vocal he used to have on a mixtape. Does this ring a bell for anyone?

"I have what seems to exist the common 'I had a mix tape years ago, what the hell was that song' problem. '93 in college a buddy made me a killer mix tape. I lost the track listing later on many moves, simply have managed to hunt down almost all of the songs except one. Here'southward what I think:

"The song begins with a clip of a British man calling bingo. He mentions 1 number and then says 'bluish? 22. Nosotros have a bingo- in TWO places.' Then it cuts into the song. That is all I remember. I tin can tell y'all information technology was '93 or prior. Any help from the adept folks who follow yous would be fantastic."

Audio clues: none. This time there's neither a recorded snippet nor any indication in the OP'south wording about what blazon of music it is.

Lyrical clues: simply the spoken 'bingo' intro. At this indicate, I don't even know whether the residuum of the song has lyrics or is purely instrumental.

The search: I take two facts—the bingo intro and a release engagement no later than 1993—and i assumption: that the artist is British, since there's no obvious reason for a non-UK creative person to source a few seconds of audio from a British bingo hall. Of course there'south no guarantee that the song'southward title has bingo in it, only that's the only practical starting point.

Searching Track Title for "bingo" yielded ii,848 results. I filtered those downwards to items released in the UK (since odds are expert that an artist's piece of work would exist released showtime and foremost in their native country), which narrowed the results to 562. I applied a 2nd filter in social club to see merely items released in the 1990s, which reduced the results to 143. Then I clicked on the View options at the upper-correct of the window to see the results equally Text With Covers, which enabled me to run across the release year for each item.

Ignoring annihilation released by 1993, I worked my style down the first page of 50 results, clicking through to each particular's detailed release page and looking upward songs on YouTube (if they weren't already embedded in the Discogs page). Eventually I arrived at the album Attain past Snuff, released in 1992.

Since the release folio featured a YouTube video of the total album and "Bingo" was runway nine of twelve, I scrubbed about 3/iv of the way into it, pausing at the gaps between songs since I was interested simply in the beginning of any given rails, and at the 21:32 marking is where I found my British bingo player. All told, this process took me less than 30 minutes.

I thought I was washed, but something nagged at me: YouTube also has a standalone video of just the song "Bingo", and that spoken word clip doesn't announced in it at all, either at the beginning or the end. Further, the vocal in that video isn't the one following the bingo hall clip in the full-album video!

Afterwards adding up the track times seen on the Discogs folio, I realized that 21:32 into the anthology puts you at the end of "Bingo," not the commencement of it. Therefore, if the OP is seeking the song that comes after the clip, information technology's really the adjacent rails on the album—"Ichola Buddha"—that's he'due south after (and, when making the mixtape, his friend may have mistaken the bingo hall prune for the intro to that song instead of what it really is: the tail stop of "Bingo").

Obviously my method is dependent on certain factors—not to mention some luck and intuition—and won't work in every instance, but I hope it'll be a useful tool to aid y'all get closer to solving your ain mystery song. If it does, I'd love to hear your stories nigh where and when you originally came by a vocal, where the search took you over time, and how you arrived at a solution.

(cassette photo by Laurent Hoffmann)

fountainsittoss.blogspot.com

Source: https://markfgriffin.com/2015/02/need-help-identifying-song/

Share this post