Everyone Knows That: internet music mystery solved via 1986 adult movie

The search for song that has consumed thousands of Reddit users is over, with discovery that it was written for pornographic film

It’s a musical mystery that has been confounding the internet for years. But an ultra-catchy 80s-sounding song that seemingly no one could identify has finally been tracked down – in a 1986 adult movie.

A snippet of the song, known as Everyone Knows That – a low-quality, warped recording that nevertheless showed off the song’s huge pop appeal – was uploaded to YouTube in 2021 and shared on Reddit, where it sparked a hunt for the creator. Some 47,000 people became dedicated to the quest in a subreddit community. Theories abounded that the song was a lost demo by artists including Roxette and Savage Garden, or had been written for a forgotten advertisement. The Guardian, Rolling Stone and Radio 4’s Today programme were among those reporting on the search.