What do entertainer extraordinaire Conan O’Brien, psych soul outfit Black Pumas and the rapper-turned-gamer Logic have in common? They all rely on the SM7B to connect to their fans when it counts most.

While Conan uses the legendary vocal mic for his acclaimed podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, the Black Pumas turned to the SM7B for a crucial live recording of their Grammy-nominated hit ‘Colors’, and the wildly popular Twitch star Logic depends on his daily to stream to his millions of followers.

These days, the SM7B has come to dominate high-level podcasting and streaming, while remaining indispensable in the world’s best recording studios. But it’s fair to say the mic, first released back in 1973, was a rather late bloomer. So why do so many people, from so many different fields, still favor a nearly 50-year-old microphone? To find the answer, we have to go right back to the beginning.

When it comes to its origin story, the SM7B has a thoroughbred pedigree. The dynamic microphone can trace its roots back to the Shure Unidyne III cartridge created by engineering wizard Ernie Seeler in 1959. Besides powering the SM57 and SM58, this was also the key ingredient in the true SM7 forerunner, the rather bulbous SM5.

This beast weighed over two pounds and was first sold as a boom mic (which must have led to a lot of tired boom operators) before it was adopted as an on-air broadcast mic.

Now, it’s no secret that the Unidyne III, which peaks in those frequencies that make speech intelligible, just loves the human voice. But what really set the SM7 apart was a shape designed to capture lots of low end and give a rich tone to anyone speaking into it. The mic was also brilliant at cutting out unwanted background sounds. And the big windscreen and air pocket at the front means it stopped plosives and other annoying sounds without an extra pop guard.

So where did the ‘B’ come from? Though there have been very few changes over the years, the engineers at Shure eventually put in a bigger humbucking coil so the mic wouldn’t pick up interference from TV monitors in radio station studios (that was the SM7A). And then in 2001 they started offering the SM7 with a bigger windscreen – the SM7B was born.

For such an iconic microphone, the SM7 (still without the ‘B’ attached) was a bit of slow burner at first. Still, the mic still managed to find its way into the hands of people who really knew how to make the most of it. Early adopters included Mick Jagger, who has used it on tons of recordings since.

But the SM7’s real breakthrough moment came with the release of the now classic Michael Jackson album Thriller. With Quincy Jones behind the desk, legendary sessions engineer Bruce Swedien was given free rein to choose whichever microphones he thought worked best. Swedien loved the way the SM7 worked with the voice, and so he used it across the album, putting the mic at the center of the biggest selling album of all time.

Though established in the studio, the mic only started to lose its anonymity with the wider public around 2008 when podcasting took off in a big way. Suddenly, thousands of people needed a quality mic that would make them sound great wherever they were recording. The answer was the SM7B.

The SM7B hasn’t changed much over the years. What has is the general awareness of what a great mic it is. First came the musicians, then the podcasters, and now the mic has spread to an entirely new community on Twitch and YouTube with famous fans like Logic. Part of that success is due to the SM7B’s unmistakable style – it just looks like a broadcast mic should – but it’s those unique sonic characteristics that make it such an icon and ensure its bright future.