Before he combined the conspiracy theories of a hundred Geocities sites with the point-and-click puzzle-solving of a dozen CD-ROM games, thus creating literature, The Da Vinci Code’s Dan Brown was a pop singer. Like a clue in one of his bestsellers, Brown’s musical past was hidden in plain sight, with it being easily accessible Wikipedia knowledge that he released two CDs—including one called Angels And Demons, its title and cover art later reworked into a thriller that helped so many pass the time on the bus. Still, recorded evidence of this early career false start remained scarce. Until today, when the sun hit the Internet just right, and BuzzFeed cracked open to reveal the song Dan Brown wrote about phone sex.
Titled “976-LOVE,” a testament to Brown’s lasting fascination with numerology, the song is earnest in that early-‘90s soft-rock sort of way, boasting the requisite saxophones and Michael Bolton-esque rasp that once shucked so many an acid-washed jean. But it’s also evidence of Brown’s already adept way with symbols: “I take you to bed and push the phone to my head / You make me feel like a man,” Brown says, cleverly symbolizing jacking off on the phone. This man sold over 200 million books.