As far as desks go, it’s tough to find a more famous one than Bob Boilen’s. Sure, there’s the one George Costanza slept under, the one in the Oval Office, or the desk of your favorite late-night talk show host. But they all pale in comparison to Bob Boilen’s desk, a true modern marvel in the desk world. Hundreds and hundreds of the most beloved artists in music history have sat and produced some of their best work at this desk. Of course, I’m talking about NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, which takes place in Bob Boilen’s office at NPR in Washington, D.C. It should be noted that Bob also works from the desk sometimes.

As a director of NPR’s cornerstone program All Things Considered for nearly 20 years, one of Boilen’s many duties during the show was curating quick snippets of music that would play in between news segments. As more and more listeners asked “what band is that?” it became a little side project of Boilen’s, posting additional info and music from the artists heard on All Things Considered. Around 2000, the little side project became its own show, called All Songs Considered, which has gone on to be extremely successful in its own right. Boilen and co-host Robin Hilton bring their loyal listeners new music discovery every week, as wells as artist interviews and even simulcasts of concerts at Washington D.C.’s famed 9:30 Club (when concerts are things that happen). In 2007, when the NPR Music platform was launched, All Songs Considered became its flagship show.

There was a lot of work getting done at Boilen’s desk, no doubt. But things were about to get even busier for the L-shaped legend-in-the-making. The next year, at SXSW in Austin, Bob Boilen and NPR Music editor Stephen Thompson walked out of a Laura Gibson show at a bar because they couldn’t hear anything, and stumbled onto one of the best ideas of their careers.

“Tiny Desks started as a joke,” Boilen told The Washingtonian. “Stephen Thompson and I went to see Laura Gibson, an artist who’s very quiet, and the crowd was incredibly rude. We introduced ourselves afterward and Stephen said, ‘You ought to just come to our office and play at Bob’s desk.’ So when she was on tour, she came to town, I got out a couple cameras and a microphone, edited the video myself, and posted it. The reaction was kind of remarkable. When I saw that, I said: ‘Wow, we gotta do this again.’ And we started inviting artists to the desk.”

The Tiny Desk Concert series was born, and Boilen’s cubicle would never be the same again. And while one would assume Boilen’s desk is tiny because of the name of the concerts, they would be wrong. Though tough to see in some of the performances depending on the angle or how much equipment the artists have with them, Boilen’s desk is quite ample. The name of the series is actually a reference to Boilen’s old psychedelic dance band from the ‘70s, called Tiny Desk Unit.

Bonus Bob Boilen Bun Bact: Tiny Desk Unit was the first band to ever play the 9:30 Club in DC.

“In 1979, I was working for the Waxie Maxie’s record-store chain. I got swept up by the punk scene and really wanted to do it. I quit my job, bought an ARP Odyssey synthesizer, and within a few weeks met a fellow named Michael Barron, who wanted to form a band. He came up with the name Tiny Desk Unit. We played the opening night of the 9:30 Club before the Lounge Lizards.”

Since 2008, when Laura Gibson played the first Tiny Desk Concert as a joke, nearly a thousand more singers, rappers, bands, and instrumentalists have kicked Bob Boilen out of his office for a few hours to give us a show we’ll never forget, on a desk we’ll cherish forever. Tiny Desk Concerts have inspired countless similar performance series on other platforms, but there is only one of Bob Boilen’s desk, and the concerts that take place there have racked up billions of views on Youtube. Big B’s.

From Adele to Zaytoven, pretty much everyone you love to listen to has played Boilen’s desk. And even if you’ve seen them live a million times, you haven’t seen them perform like they do at Boilen’s desk. I don’t know whether it’s the intimate crowd, the many leather-bound books that surround them, or the fact that it’s probably like 10 in the morning, but it just brings out something completely new in every artist that takes the “stage.” Snappy pace, a little banter in between songs with the crowd, inside jokes with the band, stripped-down versions of songs you know and love. Artists tend to let their personalities shine through on these performances, showing a different side than you normally see in a stadium full of screaming people. Tiny Desk gives you a chance to see your favorite pop stars as a lounge act at a small jazz club.

It’s impossible to rank the “best” Tiny Desks and even when I started compiling a list of my favorites, I quickly got to triple digits. There are just so many amazing moments that keep me coming back every week, from hearing the range on T-Pain’s un-autotuned pipes for the first time to rewatching Mac Miller play “2009” for like the millionth time.

Over the last year, we haven’t seen much of Bob Boilen’s desk, unfortunately. The pandemic has forced everyone to stay at home and social distance, eliminating concerts of all kinds, including ones at desks in office buildings. Boilen and the rest of the NPR Music team had to pivot and figure out how to keep giving fans the intimate concerts they craved, just not in his cubicle. So, for now, the artists work from home, just like the rest of us. Until things are back to normal, we get Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, where everyone from Kirk Franklin to Fleet Foxes has submitted their own home videos. While very good, the home concerts aren’t quite the same as Tiny Desk Concerts from the olden times, you know, with all the cool knick-knacks on the shelves to look at, and the whispers from the crowd, and the faint sounds of sirens and taxis honking on the street. I will give Billie Eilish credit for faking it by recreating Boilen’s office in her house.

Listen to me, over here complaining about free concerts. So selfish. This desk needed a year-long vacation more than probably any other desk on the planet. After facilitating the dedicated work of Boilen for decades and playing host to some of the most memorable music moments of the past quarter-century, that damn desk deserved a few (hundred) days off.

But still, I can’t wait to see Bob Boilen’s not-so-tiny desk again.