Ask Lemmy

As a kid I had heard Got my Mind Set on you by George Harrison on the radio once or twice.

A few years later when I was starting to listen to music for myself I heard the Weird Al parody, and wanted to track down the original. I didn't remember any lyrics to the original so the best I could do was accost people with a very poorly sung chorus of "this song is just six words long."

It didn't go well. I didn't find the original until the Internet had caught up enough for me to find it easily.

I had a similar arc with Downtown by Petula Clark. Thankfully without me trying to sing a parody chorus at anyone.

There's a particular mix or mashup of 'The Hanging Tree' with some absolutely magical and trance inducing vocal chops. I've spent a buyer's remorse amount of time searching for it with no prize.

It's so good. Hearing it felt like being sucked off. Pls someone help.

"Sol Clap" by Quantic

Came up in my Spotify suggested and I was like "I know this song!"

I had one like that a while back. I'd heard the song on Pandora a few times and liked it, but it was just background music while i was working. The tune was catchy, but I couldn't remember the lyrics at all. I tried humming it into sound hound and stuff, but to no avail.

Finally my wife was playing Pandora when I came home from work and it was on.

Welcome Home, Son - Radical Face

Back in the late nineties I had the reverse problem. I heard a cover of Bakers Street by the Foo Fighters on an independent radio station. I knew it was from a Japanese version of The Colour and the Shape, but no one had the CD. (Actually it was the UK version of the single My Hero, but either I misheard or the DJ was wrong. No wonder I couldn't find it.) Then, Napster happened. I've still got that song somewhere on an old HDD, in all its 128 Kbps glory

On an episode of CSI, Snakes, there's a great Hispanic song, something about "Corazon". I never have quite figured out what it is but I really dig it.

Creative use of search engines and possible lyrics have helped chip away at most of my list over the years. But two tough ones have been bouncing around my head since the early 90s.

One was a rap song I remembered from the radio with a really catchy hook. Then a few years ago during a birthday party the hook was suddenly just there blaring from the speakers, so I grabbed for my phone to search the audio. People yelled at me to put it away and keep dancing, but only I knew what was at stake! The song that was playing was Wilfredo Vargas - Abusadora, although clearly that's not even remotely rap. But knowing that title, it wasn't long before I found the song from my memory, which had sampled it. It turns out the original song is much better.

The second one was even more elusive, but it kind of nagged at me because even as a kid I had a sense of how massively popular this Spanish-language song was, so it felt like this one should be easy to find. But just a year or two ago I heard it blaring from the speakers while walking past a restaurant! Again with the audio search, I managed to identify it as Kaoma - Lambada and, whoops, my memory was wrong and it wasn't even Spanish! But I was right about it being massively popular — plus the song has been widely covered, remixed and sampled (and even that popular version was itself a cover). Except none of this would have helped because the part of the song I thought was catchy was clearly not the iconic hook melody that everyone knows, so humming it for people never helped anyone get close to the answer.

I remember a song that still rings in my mind to this day and I remember watching it way back when MuchMusic existed on cable in my country. I just don't know the lyrics, I don't know the band. The only vivid thing I remember was parts of it's music video and I tried going off on that.

With the way search engines are today, it's hard to find results when all you've got is vague details. It sucks even more when you know exactly what you're talking about but the search engine drags in irrelevant contexts to what you're looking for.

I was only ever once able to find another seemingly lost track I heard of that I also only knew the sound but nothing of the lyrics or band. The only way I found that was through a lyric site, that I also forgot about. It was this industrial song that turned out to be 'War' by Wumpscut.

"In The Meantime" by Chris Knight

Early 00's I used to listen to my brothers playlist on Windows Media Player. One of the songs was a gloomy/trance(?) remix of classical music. He had named it (something) Beethoven mix.

On multiple occasions I tried searching for it. Both the mix and the original song to make the search easier. But since I'm not at home with classical music I couldn't figure out either of them. Not sure if it even was one of Beethovens pieces.

Back in the early days of pirating, I found an acoustic version of The Cure's Jupiter Crash. It was beautiful. I tried for years to find it after losing my CD with it and eventually gave up.

White rapper, has a music video with him in his apartment drinking a beer with a tv tray, ridding with P diddy in a limo, under an overpass i think, a line in the song about a girl thinking he was mack miller. Been unable to find the guy/music after i deleted my old google/youtube account years ago.

Not a song, but two albums I used to have. One was a Moroccan saxaphonist and the other was amazing upbeat Ethiopian folk/pop. I have given up.