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Song Summary

Light the Lanterns is an enigmatic electric-folk song featuring an emotive female vocal, some mildly trippy slide guitar, and a funky fretless bass.

Originating from some magic island with a mythological background, the song's lyrics allude to the homecoming of shipwrecked sailors, some crazy ladies in gingerbread houses, and a will to live colliding with love.

The singer recounts when the lights of an illumination night memorial were about to be extinguished. But she vows to continue the legacy and proposes salvation by inviting everyone to light the lanterns.

This truly orphan-work was discovered on an untitled demo cassette in a disused Los Angeles office in the mid 1980s. Despite some 200,000 YouTube views and a six-year nationwide search, the artist's identity still remains a complete mystery.

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Website Approach -- Connecting the Dots

This website contains my journey of digging up historical and geographical and sociological facts about the mystery song. To fill in some gaps, I have admittedly made some logical deductions, proposed some likely possibilities, and indulged in some threads of speculation! All of this hopes to narrow down a direction for finding more facts about the song's origins and its performers. Through unravelling this cryptic narrative, I invite serious investigators to help find the living, missing links before the trail goes completely cold. In short, these pages are a working hypothesis built upon cumulative circumstantial evidence.

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Exploring This Website

To follow this research, I suggest moving through the website pages in their numbered order 1 - 6. You will then be well-acquainted with the song's true backstory and how you can best help the search.

For those wanting a deeper dive, please explore the RESEARCH ARCHIVES, pages 7 - 10.

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A Bit About Me ​

I've been intensively researching this project for some 6 years now. I'm a retired 70-year-old Australian who was playing folk and pop publically in my teens from 1968 to 1975 -- harmonising songs just like this with my girlfriend. It feels so familiar to the era of my youth.

I then worked in the music industry in the 70s and 80s in bars, clubs, pubs -- variously as a roadie, sound and light mixer, band manager, and publicist. So I experienced a history parallel to the artists of this song.

In 2025 I engaged with some professional sound engineers and musicians to fully analyse the original Light the Lanterns recording. We then produced a digitally re-mastered, note-for-note version of the original song.

Listen to the 2025 Digitally Remastered Version Here 

To begin the journey and see how the musical clues match real-world history, proceed to Page 2.