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Tobias Jesso Jr. Explains His Swift Ascent From Rock Bottom

Los Angeles-based songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr.
Kai Jacobson
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Courtesy of the artist
Los Angeles-based songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr.

It's an endorsement most fledgling songwriters can only dream of: Adele enthusiastically tweeting your new song to her 22 million followers.

That tweet came less than three months after Tobias Jesso Jr.'s first public performance. A month later, the 6-foot-7-inch piano-playing singer-songwriter from Los Angeles was playing that same song, "How Could You Babe," with The Roots on The Tonight Show.

So, how exactly did this lanky piano man rise to fame so quickly? He joined Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin from member station KQED in San Francisco to make sense of his unlikely ascent, which began, strangely enough, on the painful end of a hit-and-run accident.

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