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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.
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Singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens has been making soulful introspective music for more than 20 years without revealing too much about his own personal life. His latest album, Javelin, is out Friday.
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The singer's Tiny Desk performance is a joy to behold.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Stephen Thompson, from NPR Music, about the NFL's announcement that R&B pillar, Usher Raymond, will headline Super Bowl 58's halftime show.
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NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour hosts Stephen Thompson and Linda Holmes give us their picks for the best 90's thrillers.
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Each week, Pop Culture Happy Hour guests and hosts share what's bringing them joy. This week: The audiobooks Mythos and Why We Love Baseball, and the new albums Jaguar II and Blame My Ex.
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The Barbie movie is on pace to be the top-grossing film this year. This means we're about to get a lot of movies trying to duplicate that success in a toy-filled cinematic future.
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One of the world's biggest stars performs a few of the world's biggest songs at the Tiny Desk.
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Each week, guests and hosts on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour share what's bringing them joy. This week, X-Terminators, The Righteous Gemstones, and the new Gabriels album Angels & Queens.
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Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill," Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" and Indigo Girls' "Closer To Fine" have experienced massive comebacks. Which '80s songs should be next?
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Reubens' work included the 1985 film Pee-wee's Big Adventure and the children's show Pee-wee's Playhouse, which produced new episodes from 1986 to 1990.