All Songs Considered
Entertainment > Music
About the Podcast
All Songs Considered is the cornerstone of NPR Music and home to the best new music. Each week, hosts Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton discuss new music from emerging bands and musical icons. <hr> In addition to the weekly broadcast, the Emmy-nominated and Webby Award-winning program All Songs Considered attracts a loyal audience through the program’s weekly podcast, as well as iconic digital series from NPR Music, including Tiny Desk Concerts, Exclusive First Listens, Field Recordings and the 24/7 music stream. <hr> In 2018, NPR Music debuted a new series under the All Songs banner – New Music Friday – released as a standalone episode every Friday. The segment is hosted by Hilton, who is at the forefront of almost every music project coming out of the NPR Music cannon, along with special guest hosts. Every Friday the team dives into the week’s essential releases across genres – think Kendrick Lamar to Justin Timberlake to Sylvan Esso.
About the Host
Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton
In 1988, a determined Bob Boilen started showing up on NPR's doorstep every day, looking for a way to contribute his skills in music and broadcasting to the network. His persistence paid off, and within a few weeks he was hired, on a temporary basis, to work for All Things Considered. Less than a year later, Boilen was directing the show and continued to do so for the next 18 years. Significant listener interest in the music being played on All Things Considered, along with his and NPR's vast music collections, gave Boilen the idea to start All Songs Considered. "It was obvious to me that listeners of NPR were also lovers of music, but what also became obvious by 1999 was that the web was going to be the place to discover new music and that we wanted to be the premiere site for music discovery." The show launched in 2000, with Boilen as its host. Before coming to NPR, Boilen found many ways to share his passion for music. From 1982 to 1986 he worked for Baltimore's Impossible Theater, where he held many posts, including composer, technician, and recording engineer. Boilen became part of music history in 1983 with the Impossible Theater production Whiz Bang, a History of Sound. In it, Boilen became one of the first composers to use audio sampling — in this case, sounds from nature and the industrial revolution. He was interviewed about Whiz Bang by Susan Stamberg on All Things Considered. In 1985, the Washington City Paper voted Boilen 'Performance Artist of the Year.' An electronic musician, he received a grant from the Washington D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities to work on electronic music and performance. After Impossible Theater, Boilen worked as a producer for a television station in Washington, D.C. He produced several projects, including a music video show. In 1997, he started producing an online show called Science Live for the Discovery Channel. He also put out two albums with his psychedelic band, Tiny Desk Unit, during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Boilen still composes and performs music and posts it for free on his website BobBoilen.info. He performs contradance music and has a podcast of contradance music that he produces with his son Julian. Boilen's first book, Your Song Changed My Life, was published in April 2016 by HarperCollins.
Robin Hilton is a producer and co-host of the popular NPR Music show All Songs Considered. Prior to joining NPR in 2000, Hilton co-founded Small Good Thing Productions, a non-profit production company for independent film, radio and music in Athens, Georgia. Hilton lived and worked in Japan as an interpreter for the government, and taught English as a second language to junior high school students. From 1989 to 1996, Hilton worked for NPR member stations KANU and WUGA as a senior producer and assistant news director and was a long-time contributing reporter to NPR's daily news programs All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Hilton is also a multi-instrumentalist and composer. His original scores have appeared in work from National Geographic, Center Stage, and in films, including the documentary Open Secret. Hilton also arranged and performed the theme for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered. Along the way, Hilton worked as an emergency room orderly, a blackjack dealer and a fruitcake factory assembly lineman.
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