The article revisits the friendship between musician Patti Smith and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, focusing on their shared love of music and, in particular, one song Mapplethorpe repeatedly asked Smith to sing to him: Tim Hardin's 1966 track "Black Sheep Boy". While the pair are best known for dancing to Motown records, Smith has recalled that this raw, confessional folk song held a special personal significance for Mapplethorpe, offering him a sense of recognition as he navigated his own estrangement from a conventional, Catholic upbringing.

Hardin, a troubled singer-songwriter who died of a heroin overdose in 1980, wrote "Black Sheep Boy" about drug use and family separation, themes that resonated deeply with Mapplethorpe's own experience of breaking from his father and rejecting the Catholic, military and commercial path expected of him to pursue art and embrace his sexuality. Drawing on Smith's memoir Just Kids, the piece suggests that hearing Smith sing Hardin's lyrics about returning home gave Mapplethorpe a bittersweet moment of understanding about his fraught relationship with his family and his true identity.