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.
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On Nelson's first album of mostly original material in 18 years, he paints a self-portrait of a long, up-and-down life — specifically the life of an artist. -
Two writers dig to the bottom of why other people's bad taste in music bothers us so much, and along the way, lay out the new rules for thinking and writing about pop. -
The band's first album in 16 years still showcases the voice and vision of a solitary, brilliant man in a constant tug-of-war with evil, as he imagines it. -
Recently, some writers have argued that music criticism is unhealthily obsessed with pop. The problem with that argument: So are musicians in every other genre.
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The singer's new album navigates an imagined future world of sad clones and shattered identities. It creates a sonic alternate universe through which many elements float. -
One-time bluegrass prodigies reunite with an album that plays to each musician's strengths. As always, Sara Watkins, Sean Watkins and Chris Thile balance their virtuosity with joyfulness and spunk. -
The New Orleans-based bandleader Alynda Lee Segarra talks about the wide range of political and musical inspirations — from her Puerto Rican background to the Occupy movement and women's rights in India — behind her band's new album, Small Town Heroes. -
In a one-hour-plus interview with NPR Music's Ann Powers, The Boss talks about his latest album, says the current version of the E Street Band is "the best it's ever been" and shares lessons he learned from his musical heroes as well as playlists full of new music. -
At the end of a year in which pop songs were a constant, provocative part of the national conversation, NPR Music critic Ann Powers sifts through the 100 most popular songs of the year to highlight 10 pure pop pleasures worth remembering. -
The year in music included so many outstanding songs and albums by women that it's easy to come up with an all-female top 10.
