Bridges to Babylon: How the Rolling Stones Drafted the Dust Brothers and Nearly Got Sued Over a k.d. lang Sample

The most chaotic part of Bridges to Babylon wasn’t the genre-hopping or the miles of tape—it was the accidental theft of k.d. lang’s “Constant Craving.” The single “Anybody Seen My Baby?” had a melody that sounded so natural that nobody in the band noticed it was a carbon copy of lang’s 1992 hit. Only after a studio assistant pointed it out did they scramble to clear it, resulting in lang and co-writer Ben Mink getting a co-credit and a fat royalty check. The Stones basically wrote a song that already existed and didn’t realize it.

The album was a deliberate reinvention. After the blues-punk rawness of Voodoo Lounge, the band wanted to mix it up, so they brought in Don Was (who co-produced Voodoo Lounge) alongside the Dust Brothers—the L.A. hip-hop duo behind Beck’s Odelay and Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique. The Dust Brothers (John King and Mike Simpson) worked at Ocean Way Studios in Los Angeles, layering loops, drum machines, and digital edits over the Stones’ live take. Keith Richards hated the approach—he thought it buried the band’s natural swing—but songs like “Anybody Seen My Baby?” and “Saint of Me” ended up with a slick, late-90s sheen that was a commercial hit (if not a critical favorite). Jagger loved the process; Richards called it “spaghetti against the wall.”

The sessions were split across multiple studios: Ocean Way for the Dust Brothers’ tracks, Studio Guillaume in Paris for more traditional rock overdubs, and a brief stop at the Record Plant in L.A. The result was an album that felt like a battle between analog instincts and digital ambition—and the sample clearance fiasco was a perfect metaphor for that tension.