The Lovers

The Lovers is an instrumental song by American composer Perry Botkin Jr. from his 1977 album Ports. The song gained popularity on the internet after a recording of the song was posted by Pam Ariztru, with the recording being publicised by YouTube C.W. Schultz in his video “10 MORE Mysterious Songs”.

Song Background
The Lovers was written by well-known musician Herb Alpert in collaboration with Botkin, with “Soloist” credit going to American composer and keyboardist Larry Muhoberac. The song is the first track on Perry Botkin Jr.’s début non-soundtrack album Ports, with the album being released in LP and Cassette form by A&M Records.

Internet Resurfacing
On March 13th, 2017, a YouTube channel by the name of Pam Ariztru uploaded the song to their channel under the name “UNKNOWN SONG /Canción desconocida ¿Sabas el nombre“, which translates to “Unknown song, do you know the name?”. The description reads as follows:

“In [the] 80's my dad recorded this song in a cassette from a radio transmision, so he did not know the original name or the author of this song; in those months he knew my mom and they got a beautiful relationship until they got married 7 years later... then I came and my brother too and we lived as a beautiful family until my mom passed away victim of cancer one year ago; Now dad has asked me to help him to find that song´s name and we have tried asking to family and friends but nobody knows it, we can´t believe it be so difficult because even using sound hunters we haven't had luck, so please if you have any information or the real name of that beautiful melody, I would apreciate to share it with us, because it would make my dad happy. and if you don't know, maybe you can share it with your friends or other people, because maybe they can help us to recognize the song. thank you so much.”

The video gained very little attention for the first two years after it’s posting, with the only comment from over two years ago being one from minino007, who commented “ sounds of the knights of the zodiac anything talk to me on my youtube greetings”. On September 25th, 2020, YouTube C.W. Schultz uploaded a video titled “10 MORE Mysterious Songs”, which placed the song at #3. While there are no specific dates on YouTube comments, it can be assumed that all the comments on Pam Aritztru’s upload came after this videos release.

Theories
A particularly prominent theory was that the song was taken from an anime, with one commenter on C.W. Schultz’s video suggesting it to be a piano rendition of “Sei'iki No Katou" or possibly "Forgive me", both similar and from the anime "Saint Seiya", known as "Knights of the Zodiac" in the Americas”. Another theory was that the song was an instrumental cover of “Where Did Your Heat Go”, originally by Was Not Was (although more famously covered by Wham!) as the chorus’ of song had a similar chord progression to The Lovers. It is still unconfirmed whether Was Not Was took inspiration from The Lovers.

Solving
On October 29th, 2020, the song was identified by YouTuber Vinyl Lover (now known as techknowledjee) as “The Lovers by Perry Botkin Jr.”. It is unknown whether Pam Ariztru is aware of the discovery, as they haven’t responded to any comments or updated the video description to signal it.