Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
Available On Air Stations

1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die

collage 300

So much to hear. So little time. You can spend your entire life devouring music, both new and old, and barely scratch the surface of all there is to discover. NPR reviewer and author Tom Moon is trying to make it a little easier for music fans with his new book: 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener's Life List. After four years or exhaustive research, Tom put together an impressive tome — nearly 900 pages of artists, LPs and songs, as well as a detailed explanation of how each of them wound up on the list.

The book showcases a lot of the albums you'd expect to see: Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde or Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, for example. But unless you're a music scholar, you probably haven't listened to — or even heard of — the vast majority of them.

On this edition of All Songs Considered, we talk with Tom about his new book and listen to some of the incredible music he selected, as well as some of the ones we think he missed.

Download this show in the All Songs Considered podcast.

Sign up for the All Songs Considered newsletter and we'll tell you when new music features are available on the site.

Contact us with your questions and comments.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.