My sins, my own -- they belong to me.

Gloria, by Patti Smith, 1975 (song)

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine

Meltin’ in a pot of thieves

Wild card up my sleeve

Thick, heart of stone

My sins, my own

They belong to me.”

There’s something about some songs – probably not many – that make such an impression on us, we remember exactly where we were when we first heard them.

I was 15 years old when I bought Patti Smith’s album “Horses” (in CD form) and first heard her crooning …

Bam. I was hooked.

Soooo punk rock.

“I go to this here party

And I just get bored

Until I look out the window

see a sweet young thing

humpin’ on the parking meter

leanin’ on the parking meter

Oh, she looks so good

Oh, she looks so fine

and I got this crazy feeling

that I’m gonna ah, make her mine.

Put my spell on her …”

These are some of the lyrics Smith added in her 1975 rendition of Van Morrison and John Lee Hooker’s 1964 hit “Gloria,” giving the song a grittier, punk-rock feel. A feel that makes it nearly impossible to sit still while listening to. (I mean, can you? Really?)

A poet before she was a songwriter, Smith first wrote “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” as part of her poem “Oath.”

Smith is, in fact, a master at blending different types of writing, different types of music, different types of art.

Over the 45+ years of her musical career, she has written, or co-written, the vast majority of her music. She helped mold the punk scene at a time when women were rare in rock. (In popular music even today – almost 50 years later – women make up just 20 percent of top-100 artists, derived from single sales, streams, and radio plays.)

In 2010, Smith’s book “Just Kids,” about her electric relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. The book reads like her poetry, like a song, with a captivating story behind it:

“My love of prayer was gradually rivaled by my love for the book. … When my mother discovered that I had hidden her crimson copy of Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ beneath my pillow, with hopes of absorbing its meaning, she sat me down and began the laborious process of teaching me to read. With great effort we moved through Mother Goose to Dr. Seuss. When I advanced past the need for instruction, I was permitted to join her on our overstuffed sofa, she reading ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’ and I ‘The Red Shoes.’

I was completely smitten by the book. I longed to read them all, and the things I read of produced new yearnings. Perhaps I might go off to Africa and offer my services to Albert Schweitzer or, decked in my coonskin cap and powder horn, I might defend the people like Davy Crockett. I could scale the Himalayas and live in a cave spinning a prayer wheel, keeping the Earth turning. But the urge to express myself was my strongest desire, and my siblings were my first eager coconspirators in the harvesting of my imagination.”

Smith continues to lend her voice to the arts. Her most recent concert that I’m aware of was on December 30th for her 75th birthday.

Follow Patti Smith on her website.