Founder of NPR Music’s All Songs Considered segment Bob Boilen has just released a book called Your Song Changed My Life: 35 Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music that Inspired It, which includes many musicians answering the question “What is the song that changed your life?”

In a recent interview on NPR, Boilen spoke on the topic of this question and why he asks it, along with recounting the time he asked it to Phish frontman Trey Anastasio, who had an answer that Boilen did not expect.

“He picked Leonard Bernstein and a piece of music from West Side Story,” Boilen remembers. “It’s like, ‘Huh?’ How does that happen? What is the connection?”

In the ensuing clip from their conversation, which can be heard below, Anastasio explains his choice of song, saying that his mother gave him the soundtrack when he was a kid. “I used to listen to the ending, and it was so emotional,” Anastasio says, going into the specifics of the finale of the musical and the various musical moves that he noticed.

Anastasio notes the final moment in the finale, saying that “it feels completely unhinged and unsatisfying, and the plays ends. And it’s just heart-wrenching.”

Relating it to his own music with Phish and his solo band, Anastasio talks about bringing other genres into his own work. “There’s room to use all the elements of music in popular music. That’s why I’m telling this whole story. If you listen to the first Phish album, it’s all these long, composed things. You can use the [musical] literacy to wring more emotion out of a song.”