Bob Boilen loves music. In 2015 alone, he saw more than 500 live concerts. And his career has been a testament to that love. Boilen is the creator and host of NPR’s All Songs Considered, as well as the creator of Tiny Desk Concerts.
His new book Your Song Changed My Life, fuses his love of music with his belief that music can be a catalyst for change for musicians themselves. He asks 35 musicians what song or musical moment influenced them, caused them to pick up a pen, or a guitar or start singing.
Boilen can trace his own life’s musical path back to one formative song that he first heard as a kid in the 1960s: The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The song tells two stories—one, the story of a young man with a bright future killed too soon. The other—about waking up, almost missing a bus, the mundane things of life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usNsCeOV4GM
"Nothing sounded like that music before, the chaos of the strings, the fact that there are a couple of songs woven into one song," explains Boilen. “There was something about those two [stories juxtaposed] that hit me. There are many ways to discover how precious life is.” For Boilen, that message was best delivered through rock n’ roll.
Ten years later, that song inspired Boilen to focus on what he really wanted in life. He quit jobs, dropped out of school and headed to a life of playing music in his band Tiny Desk Unit, a move that eventually led to a job at NPR’s All Things Considered and now as a host of All Songs Considered. “But none of that would have happened, had I not had that passion to want to play music, inspired by a song," he notes.
He tries to tell a story in each chapter connecting artists and their inspired moment. He says it "felt like little puzzle pieces to put together.”
Boilen hasn’t had the chance to share each musician’s chapter with them yet, so whether the artists agree with his analysis of those musical inspirations “will unfold over time. I’m curious if my connections will fit their connections.”
And while many of the artists in the book are well known, like Jimmy Page or Smokey Robinson, some are up and coming artists. "There's plenty of people who get lots of coverage in our world. And then there are lots of talented people who don't," says Boilen. "I feel like it’s a mission. You find new people...and it’s really fun to share."
