“One day, baby, we’ll be old. And think of all the stories that we could have told.”

I first heard those lyrics attached to a Lord of the Rings TV promo. Not exactly where you’d expect to discover a song about aging, regret, and all the stories we never wrote. But that’s how I found Asaf Avidan.

When German DJ and producer Wankelmut remixed Asaf’s “Reckoning Song,” it became a massive hit across Europe in 2012. I discovered it a year later while judging International TV Promos for an awards show. The Lord of the Rings promo was brilliant and hilarious, and I gave it an easy 10 out of 10. But it was the song that stuck with me. I had to know more about the artist behind that gorgeous, plaintive falsetto.

What I learned was that Asaf’s original acoustic version was even more powerful. The song captures something we all wrestle with: the weight of time passing and the haunting question of what we might have done differently. Without the dance beat, it feels rawer and more painful.

Asaf is a poignant storyteller, both in his songs and his live shows. What’s truly amazing is that he didn’t pick up a guitar until he was 26. Fresh off a broken heart, he started writing songs as a form of catharsis. Twenty years later, he also plays piano and harmonica and uses a percussion/loop station to build the layered, emotional performances that have become his signature. He’s clearly not anti-technology. But there’s one way he refuses to tell a story: with Auto-Tune. He says simply, “I think it’s a killer of the human soul.”