Knowing

I've been humming "Baby Break It Down" for the past two days. Granted, most songs with the word "baby" in them get into my head a lot quicker these days, but most of them are at least more explainable. "Baby It's Cold Outside," "Hit Me, Baby, One More Time," "She's My Baby," etc. These are what we call "hits."

"Baby Break It Down" is not a hit, by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a little ashamed to admit that I had to look up its location, which is deep in the later half of "VOODOO LOUNGE," a 15+ year old record and not one of their finest. When I was consolidating music, I actually picked a handful of songs I still enjoyed from this album, mixed with a (smaller) handful from "BRIDGES TO BABYLON" and put them on a CD along with "TATOO YOU" in its entirety. Semi-needless to say, this CD gets about as much play as a sweaty nerd on prom night (thank you), and even if it did get played in a regular rotation, "BBID" isn't even among the chosen few (that would be "Love Is Strong," "The Worst," "I Go Wild" and "Mean Disposition").

So how did this happen? How do I know most-ish of the words to this song (at least the chorus) when by all rights it should have been excised from my memory?

The answer is simple and embarrassing: I know it because I played the album so many times.

And how did that happen? Because I was a fan? Sssssssort of.

It's because I was a fan in the making. "VOODOO LOUNGE" was the first Rolling Stones album I ever purchased and heard in its entirety.

Now THAT'S embarrassing.

I can't be the only person to have played "VOODOO LOUNGE" more than 20 times in my lifetime, but I hope I'm the only one who knew the words to every song on it before even hearing a lick of "EXILE" or even "SOME GIRLS."

Or maybe I'm not. Here's a video of a dude who not only admits to knowing the song in question, but he's playing his version of it. And he video taped it. And he put that video on YouTube. And it's got 1800 hits.

1800 hits.

It is at this point in the navel gazing when you must ask yourself why was this song -- a mostly OK but disposable album filler -- even recorded, as this is a question the Stones must have asked themselves every time they've entered the damn studio since 1974. Whatever new song they create, they're never obligated to play it again. Nor can they. Their live shows average around 2.5 hours long, only 10 minutes of which can be dedicated to any song made since the 70's. How does it affect your songwriting when you know you're probably just gonna have to make room for the zillionth playing of "Brown Sugar?"

But the main question remains: how have I retained the knowledge of this song? Why haven't I let it go? It's a strange thing when the fans clearly know the artists' work better than the artists themselves. Actually, it's a strange realization. I suppose with very popular artists, this happens more often than they'd care to admit (or than the fans would care to admit).