How a Lost 80s Porn Pop Song by Twin Horror Filmmakers Became the Perfect Soundtrack for Backrooms
After a 17-second snippet made the song an internet sensation, “Ulterior Motives” was located in a 1986 pornographic film. Now, it’s soundtracking Kane Parsons’ record-breaking horror movie
by Alex Kaan 6 June 2026
A24
If the internet is a vast liminal archive that inspired the psychological horror underpinning Backrooms, then hearing “Ulterior Motives” — the once-lost viral song which sounds like a glossy 80s hit that you can’t quite place — feels like entering another eerie room in Kane Parsons’ endless maze.
Backrooms, Parsons’ big-screen adaptation of his viral YouTube series based on a creepypasta anonymously posted to 4chan, has already made history with its $81 million domestic opening last weekend marking the best of all time for an original horror film and an original film by a first-time director. Moreover, the 20-year-old Parsons became the youngest director to ever helm a #1 film at the global box office, with Gen Z, in particular, responding to this story of a furniture showroom salesman (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his therapist (Renate Reinsve) who stumble upon a nightmarish realm of boundless office space in the basement of his store.
The film has catered to younger viewers who have grown up consuming various forms of liminal horror media on the internet, and Parsons pays a unique form of “fan service” to this audience — putting a liminal spin on the movie tie-in song with the inclusion of the original studio master of “Ulterior Motives”, which was released alongside Backrooms.
Christopher Saint Booth and Philip Adrian Booth
The catchy 80s pop track gained online virality after an anonymous user with the handle carl92 posted a 17-second snippet on WatZatSong in October 2021. The distinctly 80s sound and infectious chorus caught the attention of the “lostwave” community, hobbyists who track down unidentified music and try to determine its origins. During a near three-year search, “Ulterior Motives” was referred to as “EKT”, or “Everyone Knows That”, a mishearing of the line “Everyone knows it” from the chorus. Finally, in April 2024, after the song had spawned its own subreddit, Reddit users located it in the 1986 pornographic film Angels of Passion. With the track playing during a sex scene, lostwave aficionados cleaned up the audio and digitally removed the actors’ moaning to create a bootleg version.
The pair behind “Ulterior Motives”, British-Canadian twins Christopher Saint Booth and Philip Adrian Booth, wrote songs for adult films in their early 20s, before becoming a prolific directing duo with paranormal documentaries for the Syfy channel and low-budget horror films. The brothers started off in the glam rock band Sweeney Todd, with Christopher replacing the now widely celebrated singer-songwriter Bryan Adams, who had been fired. They then formed the band Who’s Who, a nod to the question they often received as identical twins, but a nearly-secured record deal fell through.
By the mid-80s, the pair were working whatever jobs they could to make money, and through a friend, they ended up as production assistants on adult films, the producers of which licensed their songs, including “Ulterior Motives”, to play during scenes. Christopher and Philip then gradually transitioned towards directing, writing, producing, shooting, editing, and acting in horror films and documentaries about the paranormal, like the 2009 documentary The Possessed, which explored the alleged 1877 possession of a 14-year-old girl, known as the “Watseka Wonder”.
A24
When the brothers started receiving a slew of comments under their social media posts in support of their documentary The Exorcist File, they had no clue what fans were referring to when they read “Release EKT” or “Ulterior Motives”. The pair had long forgotten about the track, and they described the process of re-listening to it as an emotional experience, re-familiarising themselves with a single song they had created in their youth that was now receiving an overwhelming amount of praise on the internet. With the 1986 version still lost, they released a re-recording in 2024 but later found the original tape. The brothers held onto the track to release it in line with Backrooms after Parsons and producer James Wan reached out to them.
While “Ulterior Motives” can only be heard in the background, for a moment, in the A24 horror film, the brevity of its appearance heightens the audience’s feeling that they have caught an easter egg, especially when the song will be at least vaguely recognisable to much of the Gen Z viewers. Known to most by the misheard title of “Everyone Knows That”, the song also resonates with the themes in Backrooms of nostalgic loops, misremembered pasts, and simulacra.
The Booth Brothers have since made a documentary about the song’s unique history. Ulterior Motives: The Search is Over, The Story Begins! is expected to release this summer.