It all started in the spring of 2009. Jon Aldrich, songwriting professor at Berklee College Of Music, was instructing a class on jingle writing. Eytan Nicholson, who thinks outside of conventional norms, had a great idea. Can there be a song written specifically for a city that represents its culture and brings each community something to identify with and celebrate together - like an anthem?

For over a year, Eytan developed this idea by writing and rewriting multiple business plans for how to make his dream of creating a "Boston Anthem" come to fruition. After forming a party band with Vincent Sneed, along with Berklee scholarship students named Sweet Tooth & the Sugarbabies, they soon became songwriting partners. Now partners-in-crime, they spent the next six months researching what Boston identifies with musically. They interviewed dozens of Bostonians and faculty at Berklee, researched Boston's musical history, and tested out different songs in their weekly live shows to see which bands, styles, tempos, instrumentations, lyrics, and even keys were liked the best.

Once satisfied that they understood the city's taste in music, they began writing a song to fuse the old traditions and classic Boston sound with the new and emerging sounds of the current music industry in order to develop the new sound of Boston. With the help of Sam Burke, AJ Schortman, Mike Kilkenny-Patrick, Tim McClain, Jonah Wei-Haas, Anthony Greco, Pablo Della Bella, and Sheldon Thwaites, the new Boston sound was born. Weeks later, "So Good! (The Boston Song)" is being recognized as an innovative smash hit!

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx