The Austin 100: Rosie Tucker

By Stephen Thompson

Published March 5, 2019 at 5:01 AM EST

Hometown: Los Angeles, California

Genre: Rock

Why We're Excited: Rosie Tucker's songs can be wry and funny, but they're always sincere, with a gift for metaphor and a clear understanding of just how precarious life can be. Tucker examines the aftermath of a painful loss in "Lauren," interrogates a hard-wired tendency to stay quiet in "Habit" and paints a loving everyday portrait of crucial safe spaces in "Gay Bar," which closes with a pointedly chosen Dusty Springfield sample.

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.)

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