Songfacts®:

• Although "Searchin' My Soul" became the familiar anthem for the TV series Ally McBeal (1997-2002), Vonda Shepard wrote the song much earlier. It first appeared in 1992 on her second solo album, The Radical Light, released on Reprise Records, the label that signed Shepard after she sang on the 1987 hit duet with Dan Hill, "Can't We Try." The album tanked and she was dropped from the label, but Shepard kept performing - often around Los Angeles - and gained a fan in Michelle Pfeiffer, whose husband David E. Kelley was putting together a TV show about a young lawyer with extensive relationship issues. Kelley and Pfeiffer saw Vonda perform, and when she played a song called "The Wildest Times of the World" (from her 1996 indie album It's Good, Eve), Kelley decided she would be perfect for a role on the show.
  
  "That was the song that made him realize this was the voice - I was the voice, I was the sound for the character's emotional makeup," Shepard said in a Songfacts interview.
  
  They recorded a cover of the 1963 girl group hit "Tell Him," which Kelley planned to use as the theme song, but Vonda convinced him to use one of her originals. Said Shepard, "My manager and I really wanted one of my own songs as a theme song, so we played a bunch of producers about five of my songs, and then they chose 'Searchin' My Soul' and said, 'If you can squeeze this into one minute, this can be the theme.' So then I was suddenly doing the theme. And then David decided to have a bar scene, so I was in the pilot. I was still living in New York when we did the pilot. And then I kept getting calls saying, 'Can you record this song? Can you record that song?' It was very casual at first. It was just me and my guitar player or me and the band."
  
  Shepard parlayed the small role into a regular appearance on the show, becoming the first musician on a major series to have a regular role as herself. She appeared in every episode of Ally McBeal, almost always behind the piano in the bar scenes. The show was a huge hit, and when it took off, "Searchin' My Soul" was released as a single, reaching #16 in the US. It was included on the Songs From Ally McBeal album, which featured Vonda singing many of the songs she performed on the show. The album sold over a million copies and led to five more soundtrack albums from the show.
• Shepard wrote this song in the early '90s when she was struggling to make her mark in the music industry but getting little encouragement. This, coupled with painful memories from her past, inspired what would become her signature song. "On 'Searchin' My Soul' I dug into that, basically resolving some past issues and really hoping to move on and be positive in the world and be positive in my own life. So that's where that came from," Shepard told Songfacts.
• When Shepard wrote this song, there was one line she just couldn't find: the very first one. She enlisted the help of her friend, the songwriter Paul Gordon, who came up with "I've been down this road walking the line painted by pride." Gordon got what turned out to be a very lucrative songwriting credit for this contribution.