"Staring At The Stars" is a (corny) country tune heard in the background of a 1998 episode of The X-Files, titled "Dreamland II." Since that episode, X-Files superfans have tried to track down the music but without success. Last week though, the Washington Post ran a feature about the quest, sparking many others to join the search. Finally, a music supervisor Jonathan Leahy found the truth out there.
"The song is "Staring At The Stars" written by Glenn Jordan and Dan Marfisi," he posted to X. "These two songwriters provided two additional tracks (with vocals) in episode 605, so my guess is they custom made these recordings for the show."
Marfisi got wind of the hubbub and joined the X conversation. He connected with Jordan who found the full song on an old CD backup and now it has been released to the world(s) in its entirety, 25 years almost to the day since the episode first aired. Listen to it below and scroll down for the story behind the track.
From the Daily Dot:
Marfisi tells the Daily Dot that when they were freelancers, he and Jordan "wrote quite a few songs together back then and would license them into shows," including The X-Files.
"We got a call from the production company asking for a country song, which could be about an alien or a human," Marfisi explains. "And they wanted it fast. So we wrote and recorded 'Staring at the Stars' in a few hours. Boom, out the door. Glenn sang lead vox, played most of the guitars, and JayDee Maness from the Byrds cut the pedal steel."[…]
"What is delightfully fascinating to us," he says, "is that this has been an online mystery for so long and we knew nothing of it."
