The song didn't make the CD version of the soundtrack to the hip heist thriller, but Hatch said he's thrilled it's included in the movie. "Ocean's Twelve" is the latest success of Hatch's second career as a songwriter, one in which he has earned thousands of dollars in royalties as he hobnobs with stars and manages to persuade some well-known artists to perform his works.

"Souls Along the Way" can be heard in the background of a scene in which Las Vegas casino boss Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) crashes a wedding party to demand the gang of crooks repay his stolen loot. In a subliminal reference to Hatch, the groom at the wedding is Virgil Malloy (Casey Affleck), one of the "Mormon Malloy" brothers from Utah.

Hatch wrote the song for Kennedy and his wife, Vicki, as a surprise and sprang it on his liberal counterpart when the two were having an argument on Capitol Hill. Kennedy played a demo tape of the song on a sailing trip he took with his wife to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary, and the couple called Hatch from aboard the boat to tell him how moving the song was.

A song more recently emerging from Hatch's prolific pen - he collected $33,000 in royalties from his music last year - is "Unspoken." It is the title track of the latest CD by contemporary Christian music star Jaci Velasquez, a Grammy nominated 23-year-old artist who won the 2002 Latin Billboard Magazine Award for Female Pop Album of the Year.

"I think it could turn out to be my first gold record," the senator said this week.

That prediction may be overly optimistic. Released last year, "Unspoken" has not sold as well as music industry marketers expected and reviews of the album have been lukewarm. But the song Hatch helped write is the "exception," Christianmusictoday.com wrote, "a funky title track (surprisingly co-written by Senator Orrin Hatch) which could serve as the perfect theme for a country facing an international crisis."

While Hatch is best known for his political career, he doesn't hesitate to enthusiastically rattle off his latest musical endeavors.

"I thought it was a little endearing that here was one of the most powerful senators in the United States and yet he's still promoting himself in the same way any songwriter would," said Utah composer and former Springdale Mayor Phillip Bimstein. Last year, Bimstein conducted an extensive interview with Hatch for New Music Box, the Web magazine of the American Music Center.

"I mean, I'm a songwriter and a performer, too, and all of us folks . . . have to promote ourselves to get our songs to the radio stations to get them played," said Bimstein. "At the root of it is a desire to connect to other people and express things you feel and think about and have an audience receive that from you."

Hatch explains his propensity for writing lyrics in more direct terms. "I can't sleep," he said from his home in Salt Lake City, where he is caring for his wife, Elaine, as she recovers from recent knee surgery.

In his interview with Hatch, Bimstein was able to mine some new nuggets on the senator's musical background and influences: Hatch's confession that he once managed "a little rock band"; that he was "blown away" the first time he heard Bruce Springsteen in concert, and that after he heard rapper Eminem perform at a Grammy awards show he had to admit "there was a genius in what he did," but "if he'd clean up his lyrics, he'd go even farther."

Hatch's moonlighting as a songwriter has made him a bigger star in one of his pet political crusades: to enhance digital copyright protection of artists by cracking down on illegal sharing of music files over the Internet.

After a federal court ruled last year that two major online file-sharing companies, Grokster and Streamcast, could not be held liable for illegal downloading of songs by their customers, Hatch joined with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to sponsor the "Induce Act." Their bill would have made it illegal for any company to create technology that "intentionally induces" a computer user to violate copy protections.

Although championed by the music, record and film industry, the measure died after a storm of opposition from the consumer electronics, e-commerce and technology lobbies.

Hatch and Leahy have vowed to make adjustments to the bill and try again next year. Although it was Hatch's campaign against song piracy, not his songs, that landed him on the cover of Billboard magazine last year, he is increasingly attracting popular artists to perform his songs, which tend to focus on themes of religion, patriotism and love.

Artists who have collaborated with Hatch or recorded his songs include Gladys Knight, Natalie Grant, Brooks and Dunn, Donny Osmond, former Beach Boy Billy Hinsche and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which debuted at No. 30 this week on Billboard's Top Christian Album chart with "Sing, Choir of Angels."

Lowell Alexander and Phil Naish - two Christian songwriters who have earned multiple gold and platinum records for music sales - have joined Hatch in writing songs for a new Christmas CD, and up and coming country singer Steve Holy is planning to record Hatch's "What Can I Do Different Tonight?"