Some public radio fans might recognize Stephen Thompson as a regular co-host of NPR’s "Pop Culture Happy Hour." Some may also know him as one of the originators of Tiny Desk Concerts, and other might just have heard him report on the pop music charts.
But he’s certainly had an effect on the media consumption—and tastes—of many.
That’s why SPR is launching our series “Tastemakers” through a conversation with Thompson.
We’ll be speaking with local, regional and national figures shaping the art and culture we consume.
Owen Henderson sat down with Thompson in the SPR studio for a wide-ranging chat.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: What do you think makes any specific artist a good candidate for performing at a Tiny Desk concert or what about a Tiny Desk concert makes best use of that medium?
STEPHEN THOMPSON: I think that the Tiny Desk medium works best for artists who are comfortable in kind of a natural performance space, right? Like not every musician working today kind of got their start as a busker or even necessarily a stage performer. It's not to say that artists who are, you know, kind of primarily studio bound in the way that they create their music. It's not that it's impossible for them to occupy that space in a really compelling and electrifying way.
But I think a lot of the performances that work best in that space are with artists who are very comfortable as live performers and are very comfortable as live performers without a lot of the gadgetry that usually goes into live performance. You know, anyone who's performing in stadiums is very accustomed to performing while wearing in-ear monitors, having sounds kind of isolated in their heads and are not necessarily adjusting to the warmth and variations of sounds that are taking place five feet away from them. And in order to perform in that space and really thrive, you have to be accustomed to performing within a natural balance of instruments being played around you.
OH: As someone who hears your occasional Morning Edition appearances, there must only be so many times you can go, ‘Well, Taylor Swift is at the—her album is at number one for the nth week in a row. Morgan Wallen is continuing to dominate the Billboard Top 100.’ How do you make it interesting for yourself?
ST: One of the benefits of covering the Billboard charts for me is that when I was a teenager, I was obsessed with Billboard magazine and obsessed with Casey Kasem's American Top 40, Rick Dees Weekly Top 40. These aired on local pop stations in central Wisconsin where I grew up. I had spiral-bound notebooks, and I would transcribe the charts. I was fascinated with the charts as this imperfect metric for capturing what people are actually listening to.
And so when NPR started covering the pop charts, my colleague Anastasia Tsioulcas was doing a weekly column and kind of starting to do newscast spots about the Billboard charts. I was very jealous, but it's like, I'm not going to try to take it from Anastasia, who's a genius and an extremely kind and generous colleague. But then Anastasia took a fellowship and took some time off. And one of my editors came to me and was like, ‘How would you feel about doing this Billboard column?’ And I was like, ‘I would almost do that for free.’
I'm fascinated by the way the charts are manipulated. And that sounds really cynical, but like manipulation of pop charts is a huge part of how the music industry operates and the way that we are experiencing music as phenomena and the way we are kind of told what is popular and what is successful is often dictated by these unseen market forces or by market forces that are happening off in a corner of the universe that you don't occupy. And so sometimes a new Billboard chart will drop and I'll be like, ‘Oh, I wonder what's number one. Is it Taylor Swift or Morgan Wallen?’ And then you find out that Travis Scott released 200,000 copies of his—some mixtape on vinyl that he shipped through his web store. But because he shipped them on a certain day within this chart window, all of a sudden, the number one album in the country is this Travis Scott mixtape that you only have a passing familiarity that it exists.
That to me is really interesting because I don't want as a music fan, as a music snob, as somebody who listens to tons and tons of music for my job and does it as a passion and as a deep, deep fan of a broad range of music, I want to know what people are actually listening to. I want to know what people actually like. If a friend comes to me and says, I like artist XYZ, I not only want to know what they're talking about, but I want to be able to say like, oh, you like XYZ, you should try ABC.
And so to me, covering the charts is just a big part of being a well-rounded music fan. And so I stay interested in it. It sounds like a—was it a tautology? It's like, I'm able to stay interested in it because I find it fascinating.
OH: As streaming has become the main way many Americans consume music, and at least in the instance of Spotify, there are many fewer human employees at Spotify creating and curating the way they used to. And now algorithms are doing a lot of that. And I'm curious how you are interacting with and just thinking about the use of artificial intelligence and algorithms in the curation of music and who ends up listening to what at this kind of inflection point in the history of American pop culture.
ST: Yeah, I mean, that's a big, that's a big, big question. And it's hard to divorce my thoughts on a Spotify algorithm from my thoughts on AI in general. And, you know, let—the listeners cannot see the way you just rolled your eyes. But I share that. I share that eye roll with great fervor.
I find the encroachment of particularly LLMs, you know, limited language models that are kind of this kind of supercharged autocorrect that is ruining our academic lives and ruining our ability to receive useful information and useful fact checked information.
It's hard to separate that from my feelings about a Spotify algorithm, which I think has some value. I think that the Spotify algorithm, like any algorithm, is a hugely double edged sword. I think that its value comes in the fact that it can be a genuinely enormously useful music discovery tool.
I, as somebody who does not use limited language models at all, have discovered artists I've liked from a Spotify algorithm where I will play a song I like on Spotify. I'll be in my car and I'll punch in, I really like that Noah Kahn song. I want to hear, ‘Feed me some Noah Kahn, robot.’
And then it'll play you some Noah Kahn and then it'll play you another Noah Kahn and then it'll play you somebody who kind of sounds like Noah Kahn. Or if you like Noah Kahn, oh, you probably like Bon Iver. Well, I do like Bon Iver.
Maybe you like this artist you haven't heard of. I think that can be enormously beneficial as a music fan and I have discovered music that I like that way. The enormous downside to that Spotify algorithm is that it feeds you what you've already heard.
It feeds you what you've already liked and it will give you more of that exact same thing. And so what that creates, you know, and this gets back to the Billboard charts a little bit, is you get this infinite scroll of what you've already heard where you're sort of at the tail end of a human centipede, an inhuman centipede that is just re-digesting and re-feeding you what you have already consumed. That is the problem because what you don't want to do as not only a music fan but as a human being is you don't want to cauterize the pipeline of new art and new information into your brain.
One of the things that I fear most about AI is that we're essentially capping and cauterizing the entirety of human knowledge and now we're just re-digesting and re-feeding it to ourselves instead of continuing to expand our outlook and continuing to experience new things and have new ideas and just like try new iterations of human thought. I'm interested in new iterations of human thought. I'm interested in new iterations of human art.
And yet we've sort of seems like at least this industry has kind of collectively decided that we can just put a cap on that and just re-digest and re-digest and re-digest until the snake is eating its own tail and eventually AI is just feeding us AI interpretations of AI. I feel like that stuff is just getting less and less and less useful as we go along. And so it's very hard for me to give a pithy answer to any question about AI or any question about algorithms at least in terms of a Spotify algorithm.
It's not trying to take the creation of music away from musicians. It's not that Spotify doesn't have a big AI problem when it comes to AI generated music but at least those algorithms are directing you toward other human made art. And so as long as those algorithms are directing people toward other human made art, I'm fine with them and I've seen some use in them.
OH: If a young person came to you and said, “This is kind of the only world I know of music—is Spotify. But I'm interested in building a music taste for myself. How do I do that in the age of streaming when maybe using the Spotify app results in you just hearing things that you've already heard in the app already knows that you like?’ What advice would you have?
ST: The advice that I would give is to find human curators that you trust and listen to them, follow them on social media. There are still working music journalists and kind of working music curators. Make sure that you're kind of paying attention to what those folks are writing. And like anything in this algorithmically driven marketplace, it's just so important for human beings to have friends and to talk to their friends about what they're enjoying and share the music and art that they love. Go to concerts, go to gallery openings, go to book signings, go to every cultural event that you can possibly find and share those experiences with your friends and with your family as much as humanly possible.
And, you know, if I may be incredibly self-serving for a moment, watch Tiny Desk Concerts. Tiny Desk Concerts are extremely thoughtfully curated. I can tell you that that process is byzantine and complicated and involves a lot of people who care deeply and passionately about music, who are not consulting with algorithms for anything that they're doing in relation to music. Everybody who is booked at the Tiny Desk is beloved by somebody who is involved in making Tiny Desk Concerts. And that's such a big part of it. And this doesn't just have to be Tiny Desk Concerts.
Find passionately curated music spaces, support those spaces, not only with your money, but with your time. That's a really good way to not only put yourself outside of the reach of those algorithms, but to dictate what those algorithms themselves are pulling from.
OH: We just spent a little while on some of the deeper aspects of the music industry and music journalism and, you know, humanity versus artificial intelligence.
ST: I vote humanity.
OH: You know, jury's still out. But just a few slightly less serious questions. Who's a musical artist you wish more people knew about or just wish more people listened to? And I know that's such a big question.
ST: Oh, I wish I had a better answer to this question. Oh, this is killing me. It's not that I don't have a good one. It's that I have like 300 of them and they're all on top of each other.
And do you know the Simpsons bit where Mr. Burns has like every illness the human body can have, but they're all trying to squeeze through the door at the same time. And so what keeps him alive is all these interlocking illnesses. I'm like that with music recommendations where there's 5,000 of them sitting on the top of my head.
You know who I love who just put out an album last week is this Norwegian singer-songwriter named Juni Habel. Just a beautiful, gorgeous voice. She has this album called “Evergreen in Your Mind.”
And it is this beautiful human voice capturing the wonder of walking through nature. And it has these kind of sonic and lyrical threads that take it back to English folk music, you know, Fairport Convention. I'm loving her record right now.
There was an album last year by Ólafur and Talos. And Ólafur is an Icelandic musician. He does a lot of, you know, these kind of textured, beautiful soundscapes.
And Talos was an Irish singer-songwriter who sadly died a few years ago in his 30s. But while Talos was dying, they made this gorgeous album together called “A Dawning.” And anytime I need a reset, I just put that record on.
And it's enveloping and beautiful. And it makes me feel more connected to humanity and the universe, you know, through, you know, this voice that's almost, you know, it's a voice of someone who is dying. And listening to it makes me feel more alive.
God, there's so much, though. There's so much. And I think it's almost like there's too much great music.
And so people just default to what they already like. And then the Spotify algorithm feeds them what they already like. But my God, there's so much.’
OH: Hottest pop culture take?
ST: Oh, boy. I don't know if I have one off the top of my head. This has certainly been one of my go-to pop culture hot takes for a really, really long time.
And I feel like the universe is slowly catching up to this. And I wonder if this, to the point where this may actually happen one day. I feel, you know, they just announced entries in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
But my opinion—and he was not nominated this year. He's never been nominated. But I believe that Weird Al Yankovic should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Weird Al Yankovic has had a career that has extended almost 50 years in pop culture parody. He has had hits across generations. He has outlasted many of the artists that he was parodying.
He has a near 100% approval rating in the pop culture marketplace. Even if you don't put on Weird Al Yankovic records, you still look at that guy. And you're like, I like that guy.
He is not for nothing one of the nicest people in the music business. And I think that he should be acknowledged accordingly. And, you know, to the extent, I mean, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame—you talk about your imperfect metrics, you know, for determining the weight of a career.
But I do think that he is somebody who deserves more kind of mainstream recognition as a major cultural force. And somebody who has reshaped the way that a lot of people consume and understand popular music. And I think, you know, generations of fans of his music have learned to kind of deconstruct what they're viewing and kind of have this ability to view things through a parodic or satirical lens in ways that I think are really important.
I worked at The Onion for 12 years and saw the way that having this kind of satirical voice in the world kind of reshapes the way people think about the news and politics and world events. And I think that Weird Al has kind of had somewhat of a similar way of shaping the way that fans of popular music view that. And so my pop culture hot take is that Weird Al should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
OH: Fitting that you bring up The Onion in this moment. This is a moment where a lot of people feel the need to be plugged in all the time to the very serious and very real myriad of issues happening in their state, in their city, in their country, around the world. And I know, speaking with some of my friends, sometimes people feel guilty for spending time consuming content that is about pop culture, about music that is meant to be satirical. And given your time at The Onion and given the role you are in right now, I wanted to ask you to make a case for the creation and pursuit of parodic and fluffier topics in the media.
ST: Yeah, I think that any well-rounded cultural diet and any well-rounded media diet has to include things that bring you joy. I truly believe that there is no shame in joy. You should not feel guilty for experiencing joy. Life is about balance. Life is about understanding that you are going to experience joy. You are going to experience grief. You are going to experience sadness. You are going to experience anger. You're going to experience resignation and depression and wonder. And all of those things are swirled up as part of the human experience. And why should culture be any different?
I'm not somebody who's out there saying life should only be joy, right? But I don't really vibe with people who, and they're very often behind keyboards. They're very often on Bluesky and telling you, ‘What is this dross? You know, you should only be listening to…’ you know. It's like any diet, right? Like ‘You should only be eating unflavored bran.’ Okay, no, I don't wanna. Each one of us gets one wild and precious life. We should experience the full panoply of emotions available to us. We should experience the whole panoply of media available to us. Why should I be limited by what someone else thinks I should consume? So to me, I don't feel guilty about it.
I certainly understand that the world is a very serious place. But George Bernard Shaw has a quote—and I'm gonna butcher it for you right now. It's basically, ‘Life does not cease to be funny when people are sad any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.’ Understanding that all of those things are constantly coming in and out of balance is just part of being a human in the world. And so it's fine to laugh when things are hard. It's fine to cry when things are going well. We're all just regulating that as best we can.
OH: Stephen Thompson, thank you so much for coming to the studio. It's been a real pleasure.
ST: Oh my gosh, thank you. This has been a joy
