I'm reading a collection of true stories compiled by The Moth, a non-profit storytelling group from the US. Some of them are very good, some of them are rather annoying, some of them are full of self-aggrandizing bullshit... but I guess that's a pretty accurate representation of the human race.
One of the stand out stories for me came from Darryl McDaniels, aka the DMC of Run DMC. He tells how at the height of his fame, he found himself suffering from chronic depression, and the only thing that made him feel even slightly better was the music of Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan. He met her at a showbiz party and behaved like an embarrassed schoolkid, but she recognised him, knew his music, and that made him like her even more. After a while, he discovered the source of his depression, after learning that he was adopted and he had no idea where he really came from. That's when he had the idea of recording a song about how it feels to find out your parents aren't your birth parents, basing it on the old Harry Chapin tune Cat's In The Cradle... and what he really, really wanted was for Sarah McLachlan to sing the chorus. So he called her up and she agreed, inviting him out to her home to record it. And that's when she told him that she was an adopted child too.
DMC tells the story a lot better than that, obviously, but it was a really sweet tale, and the last thing I expected from one of the godfathers of hip hop.
I think if I had listened to the track first it would have gone in one ear and out the other, but after reading the backstory it was surprisingly moving.
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