Ulterior Motives (song)

"Ulterior Motives" is a pop song recorded by British-Canadian filmmakers and musicians Christopher Saint Booth and Philip Adrian Booth in the mid-1980s, and first used in the 1986 pornographic film Angels of Passion. It gained popularity online after a seventeen-second snippet of the song, at the time unidentified, was posted online in 2021. Derived from the previously debated lyrics of the snippet, the song was initially referred to as "Everyone Knows That" (often abbreviated as EKT) or "Ulterior Motives".

The snippet was uploaded to the song identification website WatZatSong in 2021 by Spanish user carl92, who claimed to have discovered the recording amongst files in an old DVD backup and speculated it was a leftover from when he was learning to record audio. Since it was uploaded, users searched for the full song and information regarding its origin and artist. In February 2024, The Guardian named it "one of the biggest and most enduring musical mysteries on the internet".

On 28 April 2024, Reddit users identified the snippet's origin as being from Angels of Passion. As of June 2024, the original vocals, guitar and synth tracks for the song are considered lost; however, the Booth brothers would go on to record a remake of it, which was released on streaming and download platforms on 23 June 2024 on their album Ulterior Motives (The Lost Album) as Who's Who?, a name the Booth brothers had performed under at various points in the 1980s. The album would be released on CD two weeks later.

Background and composition
"Ulterior Motives" was recorded by Christopher Saint Booth and Philip Adrian Booth at their home studio in Encino, California, in 1985. Because they were "doing anything to make money", they worked as production assistants on films. One of their friends, who made pornographic films, needed music for one of their works and, according to Christopher, "they gave us quite a bit of money just to give them some music to use behind the scenes". As such, "Ulterior Motives", which was originally recorded as a pop song, was used in the soundtrack of the 1986 pornographic film Angels of Passion. Christopher said that the lyrics of the song were inspired by "a girl that cheated", saying "she was saying one thing and you found out that she did another thing". The song has been described as new wave and synth-pop.

Online search


On 7 October 2021, user carl92 uploaded a 17-second snippet of the song to WatZatSong and asked for help identifying it. He wrote that he "rediscover[ed] this sample between a bunch of very old files in a DVD backup. Probably I was simply learning how to capture audio and this was a left over." The song was thought to have been recorded in the 1980s due to its stylistic similarities to pop music of that time, specifically after 1983, since the LinnDrum drum machine and the Yamaha DX7 synthesiser were thought by the sleuths to have been used in the song. Some users created reconstructions from the original snippet to have an idea of what the full song could be like, while others theorised that the song was a hoax "planted by a troll". It became WatZatSong's "most infamous and enduring submission", receiving the most comments since its launch in 2006.

The song gained popularity online in late 2022 and 2023, and a subreddit dedicated to finding the song and its artist was launched in June 2023. On 7 January 2024, two members of the subreddit were interviewed by French commercial TV network TF1.

The search for the song was initially slow to gain traction, but gained a dedicated following over time. Search participants theorised that the source for the song might be a 1990s MTV broadcast, a piece of production music, or a commercial jingle. In August 2023, user u/HeyScarlett found a registered song by the name "Ulterior Motives" in Canadian music database SOCAN under the shareholders' names "Booth Christopher David" and "Booth Philip".

Discovery
On 28 April 2024, following a lead from Reddit user u/One-Truth-5867 who had found a similar sounding song by the same artist, user u/south_pole_ball identified the song, including its name and artists. The snippet was discovered to be from the 1986 pornographic film Angels of Passion. The users followed HeyScarlett's previous lead from the SOCAN database. From there, they discovered that Christopher Booth was a prolific songwriter for pornographic films and watched his repertoire of films until they found Angels of Passion, which features the song.

On 29 April 2024, Booth publicly made an Instagram post regarding the discovery of the song's source and the artists. He later uploaded a reel showcasing the original lyrics for the song within his recording studio, revealing that the original lyrics were "everyone knows it" instead of "everyone knows that". In a CBC News podcast, Booth claimed that the song was not written exclusively for the film. On 1 May 2024, in a Rolling Stone interview, Booth revealed plans to release a new album with songs similar to "Ulterior Motives"; he had already found the song's original "rhythm track" but not the vocal track. Several days later, he gave an interview with a Redditor, in which he clarified that he located the guitar, bass, and drum tracks, but not the original vocal or synth tracks. In another interview the Booth brothers conducted on 15 May, Christopher stated that he believed the rest of the masters for "Ulterior Motives" to be in the possession of his recently deceased friend, whose niece had planned to send the Booths a box of masters once in the possession of her relative. On 7 June 2024, when responding to a Redditor asking if the vocal track was indeed in that box of masters, Christopher confirmed that the masters had arrived and that he had located other songs from them, but not the vocal track, which he would re-record along with the guitar track. On 19 June 2024, the Booth brothers released a trailer for Ulterior Motives - The Lost Album, showcasing their new version of "Ulterior Motives".

The album was finally released on all streaming platforms on 23 June 2024, under the name Ulterior Motives (The Lost Album). In an Instagram Q&A conducted on 29 June, Christopher confirmed that parts of a rough mixdown of the original "Ulterior Motives" were used in the remake; however, the full tape could not be released due to suffering from dropouts.

Ulterior Motives (The Lost Album)
Ulterior Motives (The Lost Album) was released on 23 June 2024, and contains both the Booth brothers' remake of its title track, as well as twelve other 1980s-era recordings found while searching for the masters to said song. Due to the DistroKid preview being leaked, the album was released ahead of schedule.

Tracklist
Notes
 * "Chemistry" was originally titled "You and Me Got the Right Chemistry" (stylized in all caps) upon its release as a single.

Personnel

 * Christopher Saint Booth – vocals, LinnDrum player
 * Philip Adrian Booth – guitar synthesizer, LinnDrum player
 * "Ira" (possibly Ira Walker) - bass