The Mystery of the Lost X-Files Song Has Been Solved

The X-Files has been over for two decades, but it’s still giving us things to investigate. Like the case of a mysterious country song that played during a 1998 episode, which recently went viral on Twitter. @laurenancona recounted hearing the song during the episode “Dreamland II” in a December 4 thread, and being unable to find it on Shazam or the show’s records. “I love imagining that this was accidentally-too-good incidental music 😂,” she wrote. Turns out, X-Files fans have attempted to solve the mystery for years, as chronicled in multiple Reddit posts. (“this seems like a real x files case to me,” one person wrote.) Now, thanks to her thread, the song has been found.

Hear that? It’s a little ditty called “Staring at the Stars,” by the songwriters Glenn Jordan and Dan Marfisi. (That’s Jordan singing.) Like many fans thought, it was written for the show, which is why it’s not streaming or on Shazam. “Our directive was ‘we need a country song that could be about an alien or a human … oh, and we need it in four hours,’” Marfisi remembered in a reply on X.

As to how we got here: The music editor, Jeff Charbonneau, hadn’t remembered the song, but one fan found the episode’s cue sheet, which includes the name of the song. From there, it didn’t take long for fans to find Jordan and Marfisi. Jordan has since dug up the song on CD, which Marfisi says he’s going to pick it up since Jordan doesn’t have a CD player. “We never knew people loved our music so much,” Marfisi tweeted. “Truly wonderful to find out.” And to finally wrap this investigation!