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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First Listen
9:33 pm
Sun June 17, 2012

First Listen: Beachwood Sparks, 'The Tarnished Gold'

Credit Jim Goodrich / Courtesy of the artist
Beachwood Sparks' first album in 11 years, The Tarnished Gold, comes out June 26.

Originally published on Thu July 12, 2012 4:02 pm

Audio for this feature is no longer available.

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that every piece of music needs to be important; that it must impart something meaningful, reinvent, redefine or otherwise aspire to greatness. Next to the groundbreaking, the merely happy-making can seem too minor to merit discussion, let alone celebration. But the ability to convey the soothing breeziness of a warm summer evening is no trifling matter for those craving comfort and escape.

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First Listen
9:33 pm
Sun June 10, 2012

First Listen: Glen Hansard, 'Rhythm And Repose'

Credit Conor Masterson
Glen Hansard's new album, Rhythm and Repose, comes out June 19.

Originally published on Wed June 20, 2012 7:08 am

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Tiny Desk Concerts
8:03 am
Mon June 4, 2012

Kelly Hogan: Tiny Desk Concert

Credit Michael Katzif / NPR

The reliable backup singer who seizes the spotlight is the stuff of entertainment-industry fairy tales, but Kelly Hogan hasn't actually had to labor in obscurity.

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First Listen
9:33 pm
Sun June 3, 2012

First Listen: The Tallest Man On Earth, 'There's No Leaving Now'

Credit Julia Mard
The Tallest Man on Earth's new album, There's No Leaving Now, comes out June 12.

Originally published on Wed June 13, 2012 9:34 pm

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Tiny Desk Concerts
9:58 am
Thu May 31, 2012

Patrick Watson: Tiny Desk Concert

Credit Michael Katzif / NPR

Originally published on Thu May 31, 2012 12:31 pm

Patrick Watson has a lovely, flexible voice and a gift for wringing evocative sounds out of everything from vintage keyboards to bicycle chains, but his real gift lies in his ability to maximize beauty at all times; to guide every noise in such a way that it coheres into something dramatic and graceful. When the Polaris Prize winner performs, he seems almost hypnotized by the sounds around him, yet every second and every unlikely component seems plotted to maximize its impact.

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First Listen
9:33 pm
Sun May 27, 2012

First Listen: Japandroids, 'Celebration Rock'

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Japandroids' new album, Celebration Rock, comes out June 5.

Originally published on Mon July 2, 2012 11:42 am

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Japandroids' music proves, yet again, that superlatives aren't interchangeable: You might not call the guitar-and-drums duo's songs "great," exactly, but damned if they aren't awesome. The band's 2009 debut, Post-Nothing, is brash and blistering, yet also vaguely formless — the sound of two guys who clamor to make so much heroically uplifting noise, they sometimes wind up stepping on each other in the process.

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First Listen
9:33 pm
Sun May 27, 2012

First Listen: Kelly Hogan, 'I Like To Keep Myself In Pain'

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Kelly Hogan's new album, I Like to Keep Myself in Pain, comes out June 5.

Originally published on Wed June 6, 2012 7:29 am

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Tiny Desk Concerts
10:50 am
Mon May 21, 2012

Yann Tiersen: Tiny Desk Concert

Credit Doriane Raiman / NPR

Originally published on Mon May 21, 2012 5:25 pm

French singer, multi-instrumentalist and film composer Yann Tiersen isn't massively well-known, but he did craft the score for the beloved 2001 film Amelie, about which virtually everything is held in massively high regard. Since then, Tiersen has built a name for himself as a solo artist who gently stretches the boundaries of pop music.

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First Listen
9:38 pm
Sun May 20, 2012

First Listen: Regina Spektor, 'What We Saw From The Cheap Seats'

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Regina Spektor's new album, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, comes out May 29.

Originally published on Sat June 2, 2012 9:56 am

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A genuine oddball with a salty side, Regina Spektor possesses a vocal style rangy enough to encompass sweet nothings, animal noises, drum sounds and funny accents. But for all her occasional flights of fancy — or perhaps because her unpredictability makes her sincerity more disarming — Spektor is a skilled sentimentalist whose words summon universal feelings of love, hope, disappointment and desire.

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First Listen
9:33 pm
Sun May 20, 2012

First Listen: Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros, 'Here'

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' new album, Here, comes out May 29.

Originally published on Thu May 31, 2012 8:45 am

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