NPR:

That’s the subject heading of an email I received recently from a listener. As I began to write a response, it occurred to me that this was a good opportunity to talk to a larger audience about the music we play on All Songs Considered, and how we pick what we pick.

Producer Robin Hilton and I approach the show as music fans. Much of what we play on All Songs Considered we play simply because we love it. We tend not to cover music we don’t like. Our tastes in music are wide-ranging on one hand, but we admittedly don’t love everything. To broaden the music we put on the show, we invite others to play DJ. This week’s show featured Kyp Malone from TV on the Radio. He played music by a band from the Western Sahara, a New Zealand-based noise rock group and Kermit the Frog among others.