"Ulterior Motives" (formerly known as "Everyone Knows That" (abbreviated: "EKT") or "Ulterior Motives" [1]) is a formerly unidentified Synth-pop song recorded by Christopher Saint Booth & Philip Adrian Booth around 1985. It was used in the 1986 adult film "Angels of Passion", although it was not written for this purpose. The song was originally uploaded to WatZatSong on October 7th, 2021 by carl92.
Search History
Late 2021
On October 7th, 2021, a WatZatSong user named "carl92" uploaded a 17-second sample of the song, saying it was from the mid 1980s and giving it the placeholder name “Everyone Knows That”. When user Barni asked if he had a longer snippet, he said he didn’t, but he said he found it on a file in a DVD backup. He said he was “probably trying to capture audio and this was a left over”.
The audio recording was recorded with a 15.734 kHz pilot tone that was only present in MTV broadcasts exclusive to a selected few countries. 15.734 is also the horizontal frequency of NTSC CRT TVs, meaning that the recording can be captured from a CRT TV tuned to a North American TV station. The recording was also likely captured via a computer microphone.
On October 11th, 2021, user Null42x96 replied to the post, theorizing it was from the 1990s to mid 2000s. Carl replied, saying the file was from 1999, but the song itself was most likely from the 1980s. He also said there weren’t any audio files on the DVD related to this song.
On October 20th, 2021, when asked what country he was from and if he might’ve recorded it off the radio, Carl said he was from Spain, and that he “can’t say for sure it was recorded from radio because I don’t remember its origin, sorry.”
On December 20th, 2021, Carl has stated that he lost interest in the search and didn’t check the post often. By 2022, Carl was completely inactive.
Late 2023 - Early 2024
In August of 2023, Reddit user u/HeyScarlett posted to the r/Everyoneknowsthat subreddit, theorizing the song was from between 1984-1988. She searched on ASCAP for songs from that time titled Ulterior Motives and found four songs with the title. The songs were by The Booth Brothers, Marcelo Romero, Michael Barragan, and Preston Glass. The only artist to respond was Preston, and he confirmed the song wasn’t his.
In April of 2024, One-Truth-5867, a moderator of the r/everyoneknowsthat subreddit found a scene from Taboo III that had a song titled "Till The End of Time", which sounded very similar to EKT. One-Truth-5867 realized that the description had the names: Christopher Saint Booth and Philip Adrian Booth, who both were in a BMI and SOCAN with a registry for "Ulterior Motives".
On the night of April 27th, 2024, One-Truth-5867 skimmed through films and found similar-sounding music, with claps, vocals, and even some duo singing artists. The user told people about this, and a user named u/south_pole_ball started to communicate with One-Truth-5867.
They began skimming through the remaining movies that One-Truth-5867 had yet to search, eventually telling One-Truth-5867 that they found the song. The song was found from an adult film titled Angels of Passion released in 1986, which could be why carl92 did not give more details. The crunching sound was not an artifact by carl92's recording, but a squeaking bed that was being creaked by the pressure of the sexual acts happening on it.
Earlier that same day that the song was found, Christopher S. Booth's Facebook and Instagram accounts were found and contacted by One-Truth-5867. Soon, their more recent comments were flooded by questions about his affiliation with the song, but wasn’t confirmed until May 1st. He later posted on said social medias concerning the song he was notified about, and caused WatZatSong to shut down for an hour.
Shortly after getting found, the Booth brothers started working on a recreation of the song, which the development was posted on Instagram. All the instrument tracks used in the song were found, but the original vocals were not found.
June 2024 - October 2024
The duo would release the song "Chemistry", which also played on Angels of Passion, on its own on June 7th, 2024 and the full album was officially released on June 23rd, 2024, along with 12 other lost songs in Ulterior Motives: The Lost Album. It was released on Amazon Music on that date, then on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music on June 24th, 2024.
On October 27th, 2024, the brothers made a special announcement, and the first thing they talked about was that there is a cassette in a Copyright Office that has a high chance of having Ulterior Motives on it, Chris is in the process of writing it so he can get his hands on the tape.
On October 28th, 2024, the instrumental would be discovered by user Venny, on an Asian sex hotline commercial from Canada in 1992, uploaded onto YouTube on April 26th, 2017.[2] However, it would only be around 30 seconds and the original upload has been taken down two days later after the discovery (October 30th, 2024), but was reinstated 3 days later (November 2nd, 2024).
December 2024
On December 28th, 2024, the song’s instrumental was discovered to be in another pornographic film called Sun Bunnies (1991). It was discovered after Reddit user Some_Cryptographer_9 saw the film on Philip’s IMDB page and skimmed through it.
On December 29th, 2024, the song was discovered to be in a third pornographic film, Unveiled (1986). It was discovered by Reddit user Octanuary after they had looked into the Sun Bunnies discovery and found that Chris had an alias called Cinema Symphony’s, which was credited on Unveiled. They skimmed through the film and found the song 27 minutes into the film. With this discovery, it was also revealed that the full song the searchers believed they had was not the complete version.
In the usage of the song in Unveiled (1986), the song continues after the "outro" section, similar to how the full remake does, where one final looping chorus plays before the song comes to an end. This differs from its usage in Angels of Passion (1986) where the song ends with the assumed outro portion.
Debunked leads
A theory that came from Reddit was the D-Project theory, where the song was either a song the lead singer recorded going solo (Joe Rinoie) or was an early version of "Stuck" from Prototype, 1988. The theory was debunked by Joe himself.
A second theory posited that the band who made it is "Off Course", citing that their sound was very similar to the singer of Everyone Knows That. However, this lead has been proven to be false and ruled out after the song’s solve.
A third theory emerged that this song originated from Dolores "Dee Dee" Kenniebrew's never-released solo album that was originally planned for release in 1987. Dee Dee was originally a backup singer, and then the lead singer for The Crystals, a girl group signed to Phil Spector's label Philles Records back in the 1960s. This theory came from a comment left on YouTube by someone claiming to have interviewed Dee Dee in the 1980s, and is still in contact with her today. This lead has since been ruled out.
Artificial intelligence was also floated around as being the artist behind this song, but it was quickly debunked as carl92's snippet was posted in 2021, when most popular AI tools had yet to reach the public. There have also been many attempts to extend the song via AI,[3] which resulted in the song sounding nothing like the original snippet.
Another theory was that the singer of "Everyone Knows That" could be Roxette, who has multiple different songs that have a similar melody to EKT, which could suggest that it may have been a demo. This theory was later debunked by a Roxette page admin.
On January 16, 2024, a YouTuber claimed the song could be from the band Times Two off an album X2, the biggest possibility is being a demo of their song "Come Over" from the album.
On February 7th, an artist named Osny Melo who has a similar style and similar singing style was mentioned on the song's subreddit. As a Brazilian native, he has also worked with many Latin American and Japanese artists and has experience with commercial work. He was contacted via Instagram by a searcher. On February 12, 2024, Osny himself confirmed he had nothing to do with EKT.
Old theories
There were various theories and speculation surrounding the song. It was initially theorized that the song has been for a television show. Due to the pronunciation heard in the snippet sounding, users speculated that the singer came from an Asian country (most likely Japan, but Phillipines was also considered). Others speculated that it could have come from a makeup or Sprite commercial. Other users speculated that the song could have originated from an unused Saleen car commercial, which was proven false by Saleen directly.
Another theory was that Savage Garden could have possibly been the band behind this song. This was further ignited by the fact that, on November 17, 2023, Darren Hayes made a post on X (formerly Twitter) simply reading "Everyone Knows That".[4] Some thought that Savage Garden did make the song and that a full release could be imminent, and some assumed that Hayes was just gaslighting or trolling. Some time before December 15, 2023, Darren Hayes deleted the aforementioned post due to unknown reasons. Some people speculated the post was deleted so people could not think Hayes was trolling (which is most likely the case), and some people think Hayes just deleted the post because he did not want to be pestered any further.
Prior to both songs identification, it was speculated that the artist of "Stop Making Me Cry" could've also had the same artist as this song, but it was proven false as after EKT's identification.
There were people who theorized that this song came from an adult film, due to an interpretation of the lyrics that suggest at the beginning of the snippet the singer says the word "shit", given that very rarely did that happen on TV in the 90s. It would later turn out that it was correct on April 28th, 2024. Immediately after these news, the full song ended up being found, but containing the moans going on during the song due to the lack of a clear, studio version.
A more popular theory of the song was that the song was likely from a chip commercial, as in the sample provided by carl92, there was a distinct cruch right after the line, "Caught up in the world of lies". Other theories about the crunch sound effect were that carl was perhaps eating chips while recording the sample, but as soon as the song was fully found, it was discovered that the chip crunch sound effect was infact the sexual acts ongoing on the bed when the song plays in the background.
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
Something in your eyes, makes me realize
How strange it seems
Something in your smile, could be up on trial
Of broken dreams
[Pre-Chorus 1]
You're counting all your sheep in disguise
‘Caught up in the world of lies
[Chorus]
Everyone knows it, you’ve got
Ulterior motives (tell me the truth)
Every move shows it, ah-ha
Don't you realize that you're telling lies?
Ah-ha-ah-ha-ah
[Verse 2]
If something's on your mind, spit it out and find
The perfect scam
All your truth and dares, do you really care
Just who I am
[Pre-Chorus 2]
You're always biting more than you can chew
When will you realize the truth, cause
[Chorus]
Everyone knows it, you’ve got
Ulterior motives (tell me the truth)
Every move shows it, ah-ha
I got it from the wise that you're telling lies
Everyone knows it (everyone knows it)
Oh, you’ve got ulterior motives (tell me the truth)
Every move shows it (every move shows it)
You’ve got ulterior motives (Ah-ha-ah-ha-ah)
[Pre-Chorus 3]
You’re always biting more than you can chew
You’re always saying more than you knew
You’re counting all the sheep in disguise
‘Caught up in the world of lies
[Chorus]
Everyone knows it (everyone knows it)
You’ve got ulterior motives (tell me the truth)
Every move shows it (every move shows it)
I got it from the wise that you're telling lies
(oo-oo-oo-ooh)
Everyone knows-
Gallery
External links
- Vocaroo link Highest quality link to the original recording uploaded by Carl92.
- Youtube Link Official full remake by Christopher Saint Booth.
- WatZatSong thread.
Notes and references
- ↑ Both titles used to be the placeholder title of the song, but "Everyone Knows That" became the more popular name. It was only until April 28th, 2024 when Christopher Saint Booth confirmed that the song's lyric was "Everyone Knows It".
- ↑ Commercial 1992 Canada 1 976 Sex Line Asian
- ↑ Everyone Knows That / Ulterior Motives but AI extends it more
- ↑ Everyone Knows That (Twitter post)