
Stephen Thompson
Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
In 1993, Thompson founded The Onion's entertainment section, The A.V. Club, which he edited until December 2004. In the years since, he has provided music-themed commentaries for NPR programs such as Weekend Edition, All Things Considered and Morning Edition, on which he earned the distinction of becoming the first member of the NPR Music staff ever to sing on an NPR newsmagazine. (Later, the magic of AutoTune transformed him from a 12th-rate David Archuleta into a fourth-rate Cher.) Thompson's entertainment writing has also run in Paste magazine, The Washington Post and The London Guardian.
During his tenure at The Onion, Thompson edited the 2002 book The Tenacity Of The Cockroach: Conversations With Entertainment's Most Enduring Outsiders (Crown) and copy-edited six best-selling comedy books. While there, he also coached The Onion's softball team to a sizzling 21-42 record, and was once outscored 72-0 in a span of 10 innings. Later in life, Thompson redeemed himself by teaming up with the small gaggle of fleet-footed twentysomethings who won the 2008 NPR Relay Race, a triumph he documents in a hard-hitting essay for the book This Is NPR: The First Forty Years (Chronicle).
A 1994 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Thompson now lives in Silver Spring, Md., with his girlfriend, his daughter, their three cats and a room full of vintage arcade machines. (He also has a large adult son who has headed off to college but still calls once in a while.) Thompson's hobbies include watching reality television without shame, eating Pringles until his hand has involuntarily twisted itself into a gnarled claw, using the size of his Twitter following to assess his self-worth, touting the immutable moral superiority of the Green Bay Packers (who returned the favor by making a22-minute documentary about his life) and maintaining a fierce rivalry with all Midwestern states other than Wisconsin.
-
Themes emerge quickly when you dig into the nominations for the 66th Grammy Awards. The major categories are dominated by women and seemingly up for grabs; elsewhere, progress is not always so clear.
-
The Beatles' final song could never live up to the body of work that precedes it. But it could never diminish it, either.
-
The clever rock band delivers a performance 10 years in the making.
-
With a terrific voice cast and distinctive animation, Mutant Mayhem offers a fun and kinetic reset of a long-running franchise.
-
In Luke Combs' unexpected cover of the Tracy Chapman classic, NPR's Stephen Thompson found hope for a world with fewer boundaries and binaries and roped-in genres.
-
These songs ache with loss, even as they explode in full-bore rock mayhem, and that loss extends beyond the deaths of loved ones.
-
The Indonesian artist Nicole Zefanya brings a tiny toy piano and sleek songs to this Tiny Desk debut.
-
"Weird Al" Yankovic's self-titled debut came out 40 years ago, on May 3, 1983. So our resident super-fan listened to all of his songs and ranked the 40 best.
-
NPR Music's Tiny Desk series continues a celebration of Black History Month with this set from Lee Fields.
-
Santigold performs her genre-straddling R&B and electro-pop in a set that returns to her DIY, punk roots.
-
This year's song of the summer comes to you from 1985.
-
If you're a Mountain Goats fan who's missed the white-knuckle intensity of John Darnielle's earlier work, "Training Montage" provides a bliss-inducingly anthemic payoff.