Ann Powers
Ann Powers is NPR Music's critic and correspondent. She writes for NPR's music news blog, The Record, and she can be heard on NPR's newsmagazines and music programs.
One of the nation's most notable music critics, Powers has been writing for The Record, NPR's blog about finding, making, buying, sharing and talking about music, since April 2011.
Powers served as chief pop music critic at the Los Angeles Times from 2006 until she joined NPR. Prior to the Los Angeles Times, she was senior critic at Blender and senior curator at Experience Music Project. From 1997 to 2001 Powers was a pop critic at The New York Times and before that worked as a senior editor at the Village Voice. Powers began her career working as an editor and columnist at San Francisco Weekly.
Her writing extends beyond blogs, magazines and newspapers. Powers co-wrote Tori Amos: Piece By Piece, with Amos, which was published in 2005. In 1999, Power's book Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America was published. She was the editor, with Evelyn McDonnell, of the 1995 book Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Rap, and Pop and the editor of Best Music Writing 2010.
After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in creative writing from San Francisco State University, Powers went on to receive a Master of Arts degree in English from the University of California.
-
Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have been offering life lessons to their fervent fans for nearly four decades; here, they play a set of stone-cold classics, including "Closer to Fine." -
On Swift's 10th and most challenging album, she and producer Jack Antonoff push her voice in new directions, rethinking the sonic rhetoric of first-person storytelling and shaking off old habits. -
After Friday's Supreme Court decision, artists from around the world spent the following days sharing their reactions and plans for the immediate future. -
Wet Leg, the year's breakout indie rock band, just released a debut album full of loopy, addictive songs that are as fun to talk about as they are to listen to. -
The star who commands a planetary position in the galaxy of pop chronicles divorce and soul-searching recovery on an album that thrillingly redefines her artistry by bringing her gently down to earth. -
From the opening of their first hit, "Bye Bye Love," the Everly Brothers spoke directly to the deepest longings and anxieties of the generation that would come to define the rock and soul era. -
This song's story always must be told and heard again; we have not yet moved beyond the need for its witnessing. -
NPR Music's Ann Powers and Rodney Carmichael discuss albums they're looking forward to, as well as the artists they're begging to come back. -
Carlile's tribute concert established a new approach to canonizing Mitchell's work. And in a video produced for the concert, musicians and friends share their favorite lyrics by Mitchell.
-
The NPR Music series Turning the Tables enters its third season this week with a new concept: Which eight women were the pillars upon which American popular music was built?
