{"id":235564,"date":"2025-07-10T13:25:25","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T12:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/?p=235564"},"modified":"2025-07-10T15:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T14:31:13","slug":"key-songs-in-the-life-of-golnar-khosrowshahi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicbusinessworldwide.com\/key-songs-in-the-life-of-golnar-khosrowshahi\/","title":{"rendered":"Key Songs In The Life Of… Golnar Khosrowshahi"},"content":{"rendered":"

MBW’s Key Songs In The Life Of… is a series in which we ask influential music industry figures about the tracks that have \u2014 so far \u2014 defined their journey and their existence. Taking on mission impossible this time round is Reservoir founder Golnar Khosrowshahi . The Key Songs\u2026 series is supported by Sony Music Publishing.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Reflecting on the challenge of choosing just a handful of tracks to represent her love of (and career in) music, Reservoir founder Golnar Khosrowshahi<\/span> hits upon a simple formula: \u201cIt\u2019s equal parts easy and impossible\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

She explains: \u201cIt\u2019s really easy to come up with the music that, decade after decade, has played a part in your life \u2013 and continues to do so. What\u2019s impossible is to whittle it down and make choices.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Born in Iran and now resident in New York (via a childhood in London and a fondly remembered spell in Canada), Golnar, after stints in the advertising and telecoms industries, founded Reservoir in 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n

The still-independent company now controls a steadily expanding portfolio of copyrights and has relationships with writers including Joni Mitchell, Ali Tamposi, De La Soul and many others.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her selections, of course, represent the rise of Reservoir, and the brilliance of those artists, but also her childhood, her background as a classically trained musician \u2013 and some of the most important moments in her personal life\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/figure>\u00a0<\/b>1) Glen Gould, Bach\u2019s Invention No. 4 in D Minor (1963)<\/b><\/h6>\n

I’m a classically trained pianist, and my training was very focused on a lot of Bach. That is, for lack of a better word, the syllabus of any pianist who wants to have a path in classical performance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I think the reasoning behind that is that the compositions are, at the same time, some of the most simple, as well as the most complicated music ever written.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember looking at the music when I was younger, and you judge difficulty based on the number of notes that you see on the page. And with a lot of those pieces, there aren\u2019t that many! So you think, OK, this is easy, and yet\u2026 it\u2019s simple, complicated and ultimately beautiful.<\/span><\/p>\n

I performed a lot as part of examinations, recitals and competitions, quite basic at first \u2013 Minuets and Inventions \u2013 and I still have the muscle memory from when I was playing those pieces, which is interesting.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They got more complicated at the later levels, and one of my favorite collections of music is Glenn Gould\u2019s recordings of Inventions and Sinfonias, from 1963, from where this first selection comes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Classical music has stayed in my life. I chaired the board at Silkroad [a musical collective founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 2000] for 12 years, where many of the musicians were classically trained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then, because of Silkroad, I was working with Yo-Yo, who has released three versions of Bach\u2019s Cello Suites, the most recent of which was in 2018. Part of the premiere of that was a performance at YouTube in Los Angeles, where he talks about what this music has meant to him. That opportunity came through our relationship with Lindsay Rothschild Berryman at YouTube who was a big champion of the project. She is now at Apple Music and we continue to work with her to promote the Reservoir roster.<\/span><\/p>\n

So there are lot of full circle moments in there, and classical music, and Bach in particular, continues to be in my life today.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/figure><\/span>2) The Buggles, Video Killed the Radio Star (1979)<\/b><\/h6>\n

I grew up in London. I moved there [from Iran] in November 1978, in the middle of the school year amidst headlines about a fundamentalist bringing revolution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, as a family, we didn\u2019t really know what was happening. It was Guy Fawkes night when we arrived in London and we had some infrastructure there already so we were very lucky.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is on a Friday, maybe a Thursday \u2013 and we were in school by the following week. I don’t really know how that worked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My mother, who was in her late 20s, had to do basic things, like get a car so she could pick me up from school. Which she did, in a VW Golf, between Hampstead and Belsize Park. We\u2019d listen to Capital Radio 194, and we\u2019d often hear Video Killed The Radio Star<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

She would sing along, and so this was the song made it seem, for me, a seven-year-old at the time, that everything’s going to be OK. My mother’s still singing and dancing in the car, we\u2019re going to be fine.<\/span><\/p>\n

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