Songfacts®:

• Love, or the lack of it, is a consistent theme throughout Vonda Shepard's songbook. One relationship in particular inspired a whole album called By 7:30, but the singer mostly remembers sitting in her tiny apartment in New York City writing "Soothe Me."
  
  "You can't soothe me with your sweet voice if I can't be your first choice," she sings. Apparently, she wasn't this guy's first choice, because he never did come back to her. The song, however, made an impression on Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley.
  
  While listening to "Soothe Me" on his drive home via Santa Monica Boulevard, Kelley spotted "an innocent looking, sweet boy who was a transvestite" standing on a street corner, Shepard explained to Songfacts. He immediately went home and wrote "Boy to the World," a season one episode about Ally defending a young, transgender prostitute played by Wilson Cruz.
  
  "So how cool is that, to not only have my own cathartic experience by writing the song, but then to have David be inspired by it and have that moment. Serendipitously having it all come full circle was just really cool," Shepard said.