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To recap: California filmmaker Tyler Gillett was hunting for a song that may or may not exist.
The quest started after a holiday party, when he started singing a tune from memory to his wife.
He swore it was a hit from the 90s, some aesthetic mix of U2 and Barenaked Ladies.
His wife had never heard of it before.
It feels uncanny, like hes found a hole in the universe.
But the song continues to settle into his brain, an earworm that cant be cured.
Desperately seeking a solution, he reaches out to theReply Allteam.
Unlike the mystery track it chases, The Case of the Missing Hit is an instant classic.
Vogt have a go at figure out the truth behind this spectral single.
Or is it just a mysterious creation of Gilletts brain?
Do you have a theory on whats going on?
How long did it take to pull this story together?It was actually a pretty fast turnaround.
Our first conversation with Tyler was … let me look.
[Checks in-box.]
It was on February 16, which means the whole thing took under a month.
Is that abnormal for the show?Yeah, a little bit.
Our stories go all over the place.
Theres stuff well work on with varying degrees of focus over the course of a year.
Theres stuff well turn around within a few months.
So this is a really short amount of time, considering what went into it.
The stakes of the story are small, but the reporting was actually pretty deep.
And I think its true.
This one felt like that, but it had this weird way of feeling the opposite sometimes.
Tyler was actually taking that concept somewhat seriously, the idea that we had fallen in between two multiverses.
We even reached out to a quantum physicist from Caltech to talk about it.
And then, when we went into that direction, everyone we talked to was really great.
Like, [Barenaked Ladies front man] Steven Page is such a good talker.
What was that like?
But, yeah, I feel lucky with this episode.
Everybody worked really hard on it.
Emmanuel Dzotsi, Phia Bennin, and Damiano Marchetti, who worked production.
Could you talk more about what youve learned about that late-90s stretch in the music industry?
Maybe thats not true, but thats what it feels like.
Take your pick, you know?
Its harder to find the preeminent scholar of alt rock its not something people venerate very much.
And that was kind of all of the music in that era to varying degrees, you know?
High success, low canonical credibility.
Yeah, like the Big Pop machine wasnt really working.Totally.
But I did feel like there were parallels.
And the more stuff thats in there, the more crowded it gets.
I always feel like theres good stuff out there Im missing.
Also, podcasts are just time intensive.
They feel like youre starting a new relationship with a new friend.
Pop music isnt really like that.
With a podcast, once you find an audience, they tend to stick with you.
What other shows were you thinking about when you were making this episode?I thought aboutJonathan Goldstein.
That entire episode was about finding this one piece of audio.
We joke on the show sometimes thatReplyAllis the SWAT team you call when you lose a penny.
Oh, I just realized that another influence wasNathan for You.
Like, how can we solve these problems in the most silly and entertaining way we can think of?
Strictly speaking, there are probably smarter, less fun plans than recording our own track.
But it really did end up being helpful, in addition to just being fun to do.
I was surprised to find that the song was available on Spotify after listening to the episode.
Did that happen before or after?Oh, that was before the episode came out.
I was frustrated to find it on Spotify!
So the fact its just been sitting there this whole time made people very vexed.
Ive been glad to watch his play count go up, though.
That makes me very happy.
Ive been watching his Twitter, and I think hes really been enjoying watching people discover the song.
And he should be!
Last thing: Do you still have the song stuck in your head?Oh my God.
Its still stuck in my head.
Youre not allowed to do that any more.
