What is it about?
In Benjamin's words: This book will be your listening companion to Songs For A Better Future, my first musical album. We will travel together through its seventeen songs, discovering photos, artwork, the stories that inspired them, their lyrics, and much more. Lie down and relax, let's begin our journey together.
One of the things I enjoy most about the process of creating new music is the moment when you sit down with a friend and listen to the songs and discuss them. I want you to have that same experience, to enjoy the music together with every turn of the page, to make that discovery something special between us. That's why I've written this listening guide.
I will present each song in order, with photos and lyrics, and sometimes I will tell you trivia about what motivated me to create them. At other times we will simply be carried away by the photos and illustrations inspired by them, because I have always believed that music should be experienced with all the senses. My advice is to get comfortable and forget everything for a while while we enjoy the ride.
This album is called Songs For A Better Future because music has been a very important part of my inner universe since I was a child, and although I was lucky enough to have access to the works of very talented artists in the 70s and 80s, there was always something missing that made me feel alone and somewhat alien to the world. There were hardly any songs that really spoke about me, what I felt or what I liked. I would spend hours searching for hidden messages or answers in the lyrics of my favorite artists, but I rarely found them. This collection of songs is my humble attempt to provide the new generations with the songs I would have loved to hear when I was growing up, in the hope that they will feel less isolated and a little happier with themselves.
In Jose Spinnin Cortes' own words: With this book, Benjamin Koll takes you on a very personal journey to the very core of each one of the songs. This book finally answers to what I think is one of the most difficult, commonly asked questions to creative minds yet, not always answered accurately: what inspires you? Something not found very often nowadays.
