#70, “My Molly,” Katharine Hepburn’s Voice (2007)

150 Favorite Songs: #70, “My Molly,” Katharine Hepburn’s Voice (2007)

I don't know where this song came from or who this band is. Someone I knew a long time ago was probably friends with somebody in the band, I guess? I don't think I ever played a show with them. I know they're not famous, though. Which is a shame, because "My Molly" is two and a half perfect minutes. That melody, those lyrics, that chorus of people singing over the hook when it comes back around—there's another world where "My Molly" is a touchstone of pop music, where Natalie Portman's character played it for Zach Braff in Garden State and a thousand mixtapes were launched.

But that's not our world, which means that "My Molly" belongs to me and to the dozens of other people who downloaded it from the MySpace page of this band called Katharine Hepburn's Voice years ago. There's something remarkable about that, about having dug up a treasure that no one else knew even existed. (My friend Summer has talked about curating a Nuggets-style boxed set of lost songs from the MySpace era, which is a very good idea, if you have a record label and want her phone number please let me know. So much music from that era has effectively been lost forever, and it shouldn’t be.)

When people make fun of the hipster-ism of listening to music that no one else has even ever heard of, it's still super funny and all, but it also ignores why people like that sort of thing: because it lets them live in a secret world. Everybody else lives in a world where "My Molly" was never an important song, where that perfect hook—and seriously, it is perfect, listen to it—didn't soundtrack great moments in their life. A world where this song never even existed, in fact. There is something special about knowing a secret, some appeal to having found something no one else knows about. Why should that be shameful? 

But that's also not what makes "My Molly" so great. It's the "doot-do-doot" that starts in the second verse, it's the sadness in the singer's voice as she says, "I'm packing my bags, little girl / I'm leaving town." It's the way the chorus just repeats itself twice at the end, with all of those voices singing like children, an admonishment that anyone who's ever cared about someone who liked to self-destruct can relate to. It's the greatness that makes "My Molly" great, not the obscurity. 

But that's the thing: some songs are so personal, it is strange to realize that there are thousands and thousands of people, maybe millions, who feel such a strong connection to it. Everybody gets chills during the "when you wind on down the road" part of "Stairway To Heaven," you know? Everybody is moved in the same way during "Bridge Over Troubled Water," everybody cries a little at "Do You Realize?" It's one of the great gifts of art, to make something so personal something that so many people can relate to. And maybe it's selfish, but I want some things that are mine, that belong to me. "My Molly" is mine. It’s my great privilege to share it with you.

I had a hard time finding this song online anywhere, then I googled the band and saw that they released an album and that “My Molly” wasn’t on it! I was disappointed, but also excited to hear more from them since this is the only song of theirs I ever heard, and it turns out that at some point they renamed it “Out Like This.” I’ve kept it as “My Molly” here because I’ve been listening to it for seventeen years under this name, and I don’t think they would mind.