I Cant Wait Another Day Until I See Your Face Again

It'southward pretty common in music circles to encounter people who have spent literally decades trying to identify an obscure song on an quondam mixtape. They've had no luck Googling lyrics or playing the vocal 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 like much piece of work, I've been able to successfully ID such songs for strangers. Not because I'm Brainypants McMusicface; to the opposite. In every instance these have been songs and artists I'd never heard (or even heard of) before.

Just the recordings contained 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 well-nigh information technology, in case crowdsourcing isn't working for you.

Ane example: Slicing Upwardly Eyeballs posted this to both Facebook and Twitter.

Tin can y'all ID this funky post-punk song taped off WNYU in the '80s?

A Slicing Upwards Eyeballs reader sent us the following note:

"I write from Deutschland and then 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 there but did not hear the Name and Creative person. And so i accept the Link here where you can heed to. If you don`t know it, maybe you tin can aid u.s. with the Lyrics. We went them up and down with no Issue. Specially after the beginning words "Oh well oh welcome ….. This might be the Refrain of the Song because he repeats it often in this Song. I would be very glad to get an answer from yous because this Vocal is searched for more than 33 Years."

The post was accompanied by the song's audio on Soundcloud (and had already been an open example on Wat Zat Song? for over v 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, amongst other features (like its marketplace and the ability to catalog your entire music collection), it'due south a powerful search engine. The Advanced Search, which is free to use without creating an business relationship, allows you to expect but within Runway (song) Title.

Since this vocal didn't have a traditional chorus (where the title would ordinarily repeat), I started making out the lyrics from the acme.

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

Then something about napalm? Sounds a scrap agit-prop. That commencement line repeats at the start of each verse, giving at least function of information technology the potential to appear in the title. A Track Championship 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 announced in iii different song titles on a given album, not necessarily all in the same vocal title).

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

The OP said the record was from the '80s and the recording screams '80s also. Choosing Decade>1980 from the menu downwards the left side of the search window narrows it downward from 44 to 7.

As for genre, would Discogs have this filed under punk, funk, other? Those distinctions are subjective, which is why I opted non to use their filters for this step 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, likewise as the "Hot Hits" compilation. If this song had ever been a hot hit, someone would have identified information technology past now). That left me with only one consequence to investigate:Maxi Trip the light fantastic Pool Vol. 2 – Musikladen Eurotops.

NB: Discogs, due to the way its records are structured, returned three dissimilar iterations of this same anthology in the search results: one being the 'master page' for that release/anthology and the other two detailing the separate formats of the release, CD and LP. All 3 are interchangeable for my purposes, so no demand to wait at each.

3. Use streaming music resources to follow leads.

Given that my keywords were spread beyond 2 track titles on this compilation—"Oh Well" (past an artist of the same proper noun), and another titled "Welcome, Car Gun"—and that my vocal hardly seemed similar society fodder, this was probably a expressionless end but I was already here and decided to see information technology through. The old championship was a ameliorate match to my lyric than the latter so I followed the hyperlink to the Discogs folio showing Oh Well's discography. The song "Oh Well", since information technology was released as a unmarried, had its own subpage with an embedded YouTube video, a quick scan of which proved it wasn't the song I was subsequently.

"Machine gun" didn't appear in the lyrics of my song, so it seemed illogical to assume that the latter song had whatsoever relevance to my search. Back to the drawing board.

iv. Repeat steps 1-3 as needed.

I didn't carp pursuing the words "oh well" any farther because, on their own, they simply didn't experience distinctive or interesting enough to be a championship for this song. Instead, I turned my sights to "turncoat Sam." Few writers would be able to resist making such a unique turn of phrase the claw on which to hang a song, then it had a better hazard of appearing in the title. Just that search yielded only 2 results, which were chop-chop ruled out. Additional searches for "turncoat" and "welcome turncoat" were similarly fruitless.

Out of other options, I searched for "Sam". Filtering down to just the '80s nevertheless left virtually 2700 releases. Scanning the offset page of l results, I eliminated anything immediately recognizable (e.g. T. Male monarch's "Telegram Sam"), the foreign language items, the ones apparently in non-applicable genres like jazz, and ones in which Sam was inextricably paired with other words ("Play It Again, Sam", etc.).

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

It was for a single of a song called "Uncle Sam" by a group I'd never heard of, Rhythm of Life. Clicking through to that subpage showed that information technology was a UK release from 1981, classified as New Moving ridge. On this type of page, Discogs displays suggestions of similar artists; while I wasn't intimately familiar with the ones listed hither (Josef K, 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 result; later a brief drum intro that was missing from the original post, there was my vocal. It wasn't "turncoat Sam" after all… information technology was "Oh well, oh welcome to Uncle Sam", with "to" and "Uncle" sung so close together as to audio like one word.

[Editor's annotation: that video used to be embedded correct here then that yous could hear information technology, but has since been removed from YouTube and not replaced. In fact, Rhythm of Life'southward "Uncle Sam" appears non to exist bachelor on any legitimate streaming service—or for digital download—in the Us, and tin can only exist establish on a 2-CD Paul Haig compilation from Brussels-based Les Disques du Crépuscule characterization. And that fact, dear reader—that the spider web giveth and the web taketh away—is a perfect example of why I always view my personal music library as more than essential and comprehensive than any subscription-based streaming service tin promise to be.]

To be fair, intuition played a part in arriving at the solution, as did good luck; if my song had appeared on the 50th page of "Sam" results instead of the offset, would I take institute information technology? (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 take a decent if not comprehensive knowledge, etc.) However, 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 like [artist proper noun hither]" guesswork failed.

Here's one more example off the top of my head, using the same steps—identifying the sound clues, lyrical clues, and parameters for the search.

Case #2

Sound clues: a song taped off an American alt radio station in 1988. The artist sounded American, slightly roots-rockish but with sonic polish, and a bit Paisley Hugger-mugger.

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

Any proper noun you go by, she goes by now too
What else would she practice?
She'due south got her final resorts in the postal service
To box three five comma oh oh oh

The search: the last line was the all-time bet. The number 35,000 spoken in that way, equally its individual components, was so unusual that it took a while to realize that's what I was hearing, every bit opposed to the oh-oh-ohs simply being vocal punctuations. Existence catchy and unique, it was the most obvious hook. 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 after their release unless they've achieved some status. Searching Discogs in two fields—Track Championship for "35,000", and Yr for 1987—took me straight to it: "35,000" past Insiders, from an album chosen Ghost On the Embankment.

I'1000 not surprised it eluded someone for decades; information technology was a deep anthology cut, not a single, and it'southward not on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes or Amazon. I had to track information technology downwards on (at present-defunct) Grooveshark in order to verify its identity.

Example #3, without audio

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

NAME THAT TUNE: Scott's having problem tracking downwardly a song he used to have on a mixtape. Does this band a bell for anyone?

"I take what seems to be the common 'I had a mix record years ago, what the hell was that vocal' problem. '93 in higher a buddy fabricated me a killer mix tape. I lost the rail listing afterward many moves, but take managed to hunt down near all of the songs except 1. Here's what I remember:

"The song begins with a prune of a British human calling bingo. He mentions i number and then says 'blue? 22. We take a bingo- in TWO places.' Then it cuts into the song. That is all I remember. I can tell you it was '93 or prior. Any help from the skilful folks who follow you would exist fantastic."

Audio clues: none. This time at that place'due south neither a recorded snippet nor any indication in the OP's wording about what blazon of music information technology is.

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

The search: I have two facts—the bingo intro and a release appointment no after than 1993—and i assumption: that the creative person is British, since in that location's no obvious reason for a non-United kingdom artist to source a few seconds of audio from a British bingo hall. Of class at that place's no guarantee that the song'southward championship has bingo in it, simply that'south the only applied starting point.

Searching Track Title for "bingo" yielded 2,848 results. I filtered those downward to items released in the UK (since odds are good that an creative person's work would be released offset and foremost in their native state), which narrowed the results to 562. I applied a second filter in order to run across only items released in the 1990s, which reduced the results to 143. And so I clicked on the View options at the upper-correct of the window to see the results as Text With Covers, which enabled me to see the release year for each particular.

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

Since the release page featured a YouTube video of the total album and "Bingo" was track nine of twelve, I scrubbed about three/four of the style into it, pausing at the gaps between songs since I was interested only in the beginning of whatsoever given runway, and at the 21:32 mark is where I found my British bingo actor. All told, this procedure took me less than 30 minutes.

I thought I was done, merely something nagged at me: YouTube also has a standalone video of just the song "Bingo", and that spoken word clip doesn't announced in information technology at all, either at the kickoff or the finish. Farther, the song in that video isn't the ane post-obit the bingo hall prune in the total-album video!

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

Plainly 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 help you get closer to solving your own mystery song. If it does, I'd honey 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)

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

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