WEBSITE SUMMARY - Updated July 2026
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Summary of the Mystery
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Light the Lanterns is known as a "Lostwave mystery song". This truly orphan-work was discovered on an untitled demo cassette in a disused Los Angeles office in the mid 1980s. But despite over 200,000 listens on YouTube, and much global searching by fans of the song over 7 years, no-one has yet been able to identify the singer or performers. But we are closing in!
Light the Lanterns is an enigmatic electric-folk song, proven within the following pages to be from the late 1960s. It features an emotive female vocal, some mildly trippy slide guitar, and a funky fretless bass.
The lyrics [in bold italics] describe a woman born on a magic island with a mythological background. They tell of the homecoming of shipwrecked sailors, crazy ladies in gingerbread houses, a drunken "Grace" in a Chinese restaurant, and the 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.
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Latest Search Updates
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AMAZING POSSIBLE NEW LEAD
> Was our singer-songwriter a member of the Rainbow Girls? [Not the band but the IORG]
PROOF OF SONG AGE
> 12 Definitive Proofs of Late 60s Song
> New Detailed Analysis of 60s Guitar Chords
GUITAR TABS FOR LIGHT THE LANTERNS
> Check out this link here >>>
NEW FAQs for Quick Answers
- Pages 3 - 7 for general research narrative.
- Pages 8 - 12 for research archives.
- Updates Blog for latest info.
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Search Goals -- The Big Picture
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The thing which makes LTL such a compelling mystery to solve -- even more so than finding its mystery singer -- is its maritime folk history, its catchy musicality, and its underlying mystic sentiment. There's something in the lyrics and music which even makes some listeners cry.
The singer and songwriter's identity -- now either around 80 years old or passed on -- is only one part of this mystery song and its enigmatic backstory. I see it as a big jigsaw puzzle, coming together via the following threads:
- Interpretation of the lyrics;
- Establishing the historical period of the story;
- Establishing the geographical location of the story;
- Establishing the time-period of recording;
- Establishing the location of recording;
- Establishing the relationship of the story's characters;
- Profiling the singer and her musical genre and social milieu;
- And of course, recognition of the singer's voice, along with the distinctive lead guitar and fretless bass work.
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Website Approach -- Connecting the Dots
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This website contains the results of my digging up historical, geographical, musical and sociological facts about the mystery song. To ensure transparency, my approach can be classified in 3 ways:
[Fact] — Verifiable source documents, photos, emails with musical historians experts, audio, videos, online forum statements, maritime and military archives.
[Deduction] — Circumstantial alignment where the historical data points strongly in one logical direction.
[Speculation] — Informed theories are used to fill in the narrative gaps, based on either research context or my own music industry experience. I am continually trying to prove or disprove my own speculations to further the factuality of this research. All references are either internally linked within these pages or externally on The Web.
To refine the different fields of research, my methodology has looked into the following areas:
- Musical experts have been consulted.
- Genealogy of the characters has been investigated.
- Coastal maritime history has been verified.
- Musicology genres, instrumentation and production have been examined by experts and examples provided.
- Popular myths about the song have been debunked.
This investigation is a narrative discovery. My thesis has developed and gradually solidified over the years. By distinguishing between what is proven and what is inferred, these pages present a disciplined, working hypothesis built upon both facts and cumulative circumstantial evidence to unravel this mysterious song.
To follow this research, I suggest moving through the website pages in their numbered order 3 - 7. For those wanting a deeper dive, please explore the actual RESEARCH ARCHIVES, Pages 8 - 12. You will then be well-acquainted with the evidence behind the song's intriguing backstory and how you can best help the search.
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A Bit About Me
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I've been intensively researching this project for some 5 years now. I'm a retired 70-year-old Australian (b.1955) who, since my early teens, along with my older siblings, had been absorbing US pop and folk music of the same era as this song (1960-1970). From 1970 to 1975 I was performing folk and pop publicly -- harmonising songs just like this with my girlfriend. So I experienced a musical upbringing probably quite similar to the artists of this song. Light the Lanterns feels so familiar to my youth.
In the late 70s and 80s I worked in bars, clubs, pubs -- variously as a roadie, sound and light mixer, band manager, and publicist.
In 2025 I engaged with professional sound engineers and musicians to fully analyse the original Light the Lanterns recording. We then produced a digitally re-mastered, stereo hi-fi MP3. This is a composite of cleansed stem tracks overlaid with note-for-note renditions of the original song. This is the only copy on the web which is not a muddy copy of a muddy copy.
TO BEGIN THE JOURNEY INTO THIS FASCINATING MYSTERY SONG > > >
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