Standing at the crossroads—the Mississippi crossroads of Robert Johnson and the devil’s infamous meeting—Mark Radcliffe found himself facing his own personal crunch point. Aged sixty, he had just mourned the death of his father, only to be handed a diagnosis of mouth and throat cancer.

This momentous time in his life, and being at the most famous junction in music history, led Radcliffe to think about the pivotal tracks in music and how the musicians who wrote and performed them—from Woodie Guthrie to Gloria Gaynor, Kurt Cobain to Bob Marley—had reached the crossroads that led to such epoch-changing music.

In this warm, intimate account of music and its power to transform our lives, Radcliffe takes a personal journey through these touchstone tracks, looking at the story behind the records and his own experiences as he goes in search of these moments.