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I was flippin’ magazines/ In that place on Mercer Street/ When I thought I spotted her…
Written by: Jagger/Richards/K.D. Lang/Ben Mink Recorded: Ocean Way Recording Studios, Hollywood, USA, March 13-July 1997 Guest musicians: Waddy Wachtel (electric and acoustic guitar), Jamie Muhoberac (bass and keyboards), Joe Sublett (saxophone), Blondie Chaplin (tambourine), Don Was (keyboards), Bernard Fowler & Blondie Chaplin (background vocals), Biz Markie (rap) *Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012
From Songfacts: Shortly before Bridges To Babylon was released, The Stones noticed that this song – particularly the vocal melody in the chorus – sounds a lot like kd lang’s 1992 hit “Constant Craving.” With a major publicity push and tour for the album on the way, they wanted to avoid a lawsuit, so they listed Lang and her “Constant Craving” co-writer Ben Mink as composers along with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. This ensured that Lang received royalties, for which she was grateful.
The video was directed by Samuel Bayer, who also did Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Angelina Jolie, 22 at the time, stars in the clip as a stripper who stops in the middle of her performance and walks out of the club.
This song is rumored to have been written about the actress Mary Badham. Mick Jagger fell briefly for the star of the film To Kill A Mockingbird in 1970, but after a short romance, she dumped him.
Waddy Wachtel played guitar on this track. Wachtel is a popular Los Angeles session musician known for his work with Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, Linda Ronstadt, Stevie Nicks and Don Henley.
This is a rare Rolling Stones song that uses a sample. About two-thirds into the song, you’ll hear a bit of the 1986 Biz Markie track “A One Two.” Markie is most famous for his 1989 hit “Just A Friend,” which more recently was featured in a widely broadcast 2009 Heineken TV commercial.
From the Rolling Stones – All the Songs, The Story Behind Every Track book: The narrator is a rock singer who has fallen in love with a woman who has vanished on the breeze. He has been looking for her ever since. Has she run away? His anxiety increases from second to second until eventually the rock star asks himself whether this woman, whom he has called a thousand times, exists only in his imagination. “Anybody Seen My Baby?” is mainly the work of Mick Jagger, who may have written it in memory of the actress Mary Badham (whom he met while he was married to Bianca). The word mainly is used because the refrain bears an uncanny resemblance to “Constant Craving” by k.d. lang, while the rap section is borrowed from “A One Two” by the hip-hop artist Biz Markie. As the A-side of a single released on September 22, 1997, the song hit number 1 in Canada, but got no further than number 22 in the United Kingdom, and failed to enter the charts in the United States. The title may be an allusion, for “Has Anybody Seen My Baby?” was also the name of a song Brian Jones is thought to have written after being ousted from the Rolling Stones!
