Stephen Thompson

Stephen Thompson is an editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he curates Song of the Day, fusses over the placement of commas and appears as a frequent panelist on the podcasts All Songs Considered and Pop Culture Happy Hour. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the weekly NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk.

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 the NPR programs Weekend Edition Sunday, Weekend All Things Considered and Morning Edition, on which he earned the distinction of becoming the only 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 forthcoming anthology 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 two children and a Frogger machine. His 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 and maintaining a fierce rivalry with all Midwestern states other than Wisconsin.

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All Songs Considered
3:50 pm
Wed March 13, 2013

Baby Bands, Pop Stars And Room-Filling Joy: What To Expect At SXSW 2013

Credit Adam Kissick for NPR
Twin Horns Of Joy? Members of the band The Bottom Dollars play on the street in Austin, Texas, during the opening night of the South by Southwest music festival.

Originally published on Sat March 16, 2013 8:55 am

Listen to Stephen Thompson's conversation with Audie Cornish on All Things Considered by clicking the audio link.


The South by Southwest music festival kicked off Tuesday with the first of five straight nights of music overload: The clubs, makeshift music venues and front porches of Austin, Texas, were overrun with little-known discoveries-in-waiting and big names alike, as well as tens of thousands of fans who have flocked to the city in search of epiphanies.

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First Listen
11:09 am
Mon March 11, 2013

First Listen: Low, 'The Invisible Way'

Credit Zoran Orlic / Courtesy of the artist
Low's new album, The Invisible Way, comes out March 19.

Originally published on Wed March 20, 2013 7:47 am

Audio for this feature is no longer available.

In 20 years, Low's basic ingredients haven't changed much: Guitarist Alan Sparhawk and drummer Mimi Parker swap and sometimes layer their vocals, with a third member joining the married couple on bass. The pace, for the most part, is kept deliberate, even glacial, with strategically deployed silence hanging between notes in order to enhance their power. Low songs don't often change tempo noticeably, instead achieving tension through variations in volume.

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All Songs Considered
11:22 am
Thu March 7, 2013

We Get Mail: Picking The Perfect Travel Playlist

Credit iStockphoto.com
This little scamp gets ready for Norway's Trondheim Metal Fest by psyching himself up with the music of Napalm Death.

Originally published on Wed March 6, 2013 8:15 pm

SXSW: Live From Austin
1:42 pm
Wed March 6, 2013

Dave Grohl's SXSW 2013 Keynote Speech

Credit Mito Habe-Evans / NPR
Dave Grohl gives the keynote speech at SXSW 2013.

Originally published on Thu March 21, 2013 10:46 am

Somewhere along the way, Dave Grohl has become the unofficial Mayor of Rock 'n' Roll: a gregarious ambassador who wins armloads of Grammys and even directs a documentary — Sound City: Real to Reel — about the artistry, technology and magic that goes into making a great studio recording. So it makes sense that Grohl would address the assembled music fans at the SXSW music conference for the year's keynote speech.

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SXSW: Live From Austin
5:30 pm
Tue March 5, 2013

The Mix: The Austin 100

Credit Loren Wohl for NPR
Molly Hamilton of Widowspeak is one of the 100 acts with songs in our annual SXSW sampler.

Originally published on Fri April 5, 2013 2:03 pm

Audio for The Austin 100 is no longer available.

It says a lot about SXSW's size and scope that this "sampler" of the annual music festival spans six and a half hours, but here we are: 100 songs by 100 artists worth discovering at this year's big event.

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First Listen
11:16 am
Mon March 4, 2013

First Listen: Devendra Banhart, 'Mala'

Credit Ana Kras / Courtesy of the artist
Devendra Banhart's new album, Mala, comes out March 12.

Originally published on Tue March 5, 2013 4:37 pm

For a guy who gets tagged with a lot of limiting descriptors — "freak folk," "hippie" and so forth — Devendra Banhart doesn't like to let his music sit in any spot for long. His catalog, which now includes seven official albums, has taken him through warmly intimate ballads, raw and unselfconsciously strange home recordings, songs in several languages (Banhart spent much of his childhood in Venezuela), a lot of smoothly strummy folk-pop and the occasional low-key anthem about free-spiritedness.

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First Listen
11:15 am
Mon March 4, 2013

First Listen: Phosphorescent, 'Muchacho'

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Phosphorescent's new album, Muchacho, comes out March 19.

Originally published on Wed March 20, 2013 7:45 am

Audio for this feature is no longer available.

An Alabama native now based in Brooklyn, Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck sings with wryly weary raggedness to suit his late-at-night laments. Even when their arrangements feel grand and fleshed-out, epic and searching, Houck's best songs come off like intimate conversations with a confidante — wise and soft, and warmed by experience.

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First Listen
11:03 am
Fri March 1, 2013

First Listen: Jimi Hendrix, 'People, Hell And Angels'

Credit Brian T. Colvil / Courtesy of the artist
Jimi Hendrix's new album, People, Hell and Angels, comes out March 5.

Originally published on Wed March 6, 2013 6:55 am

Audio for this feature is no longer available.

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All Songs Considered
11:01 am
Fri March 1, 2013

We Get Mail: With Kids In The Car, Who Controls The Stereo?

Credit iStockphoto
This little scamp has no say over the car stereo.

Originally published on Wed February 27, 2013 5:02 pm

First Listen
4:25 pm
Mon February 25, 2013

First Listen: Josh Ritter, 'The Beast In Its Tracks'

Credit Laura Wilson / Courtesy of the artist
Josh Ritter's new album, The Beast in Its Tracks, comes out March 5.

Originally published on Tue February 26, 2013 6:41 am

As one of the most thoughtful singer-songwriters around, Josh Ritter isn't one to write angry, over-the-top, knee-jerk breakup songs — even though his new album, The Beast in Its Tracks, was written entirely in response to his own recent divorce. Gentility and empathy are wired into Ritter's songwriting, so his idea of a breakup anthem is the gorgeous and glorious "Joy to You Baby," in which he closes the book on a relationship by wishing everyone well, himself included.

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