Stephen Thomas "Come Home To Me"

From Charleston, West Virginia, and based in Los Angeles, singer Stephen Thomas got his start in 2012 with his contemporary R&B album Changes. But these days, Thomas leans into other styles. Starting with his single, “Back Home,” in 2024, Thomas made a sudden shift into alternative rock. His voice took on some grit, and he dropped the vocal flourishes for an anthemic sound not unlike alternative’s ubiquitous Foo Fighters.

Then, in mid-2025, he brought his old R&B sound into the mix with “Strange Love” and, now, his most recent single, “Come Home to Me.”

“Come Home to Me” opens with a repeated guitar hook (that stretches the length of the song) under the kind of smooth singing one expects in the intro to a gospel track. Unnaturally alacritous drumbeats lead the listener to a gentle swell that would make a CCM artist swoon.

The initial setting doesn’t change, and the song’s dynamic rises and drops without undue drama, leaving the lion’s share of the interest to rest on Thomas’s voice. He walks a thin line in the beginning, calling up country music cliches and even thickening what may be an honest accent as he sings of falling in love and sunsets watched from “the back of my truck.” But as the song progresses, his voice loses the country affectation in a quietly emotive shift of tone as the singer chases after this idyllic love in the face of real-world challenges.

Thomas’s vocal colors, textures, harmonies, and range are what make the song worth its three and a half minutes and are a welcome return from a stylistic shift that didn’t do his voice justice.

Reviewed by Christopher Raley