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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The allegations against Michael Jackson in the documentary Leaving Neverland make listening to his songs a struggle, one that resists the comfort those songs once provided. -
The track, recorded with Colombian singer Maluma, channels "Despacito," with a nod toward Madonna's 1986 song "La Isla Bonita."
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The All Songs gang looks back at this year's anthems and unmissable milestones, from Kendrick Lamar's Pulitzer to Childish Gambino's mind-blowing video for "This Is America," Rosalía, Mitski and more. -
Music critic Ann Powers curated a playlist of women expressing one thing: Enough is enough. -
One day after performing the songs in Nashville, the country supergroup has released all three digitally ahead of the release of its new album, InterstateGospel. -
While it's not wrong to observe decorum and sombre reflection in the wake of such a loss, there's no reason that honoring a life as monumental as Aretha's can't be joyful — and yes, entertaining. -
The title track from Joshua Hedley's forthcoming album Mr. Jukebox mines both country music history and his own experience playing for Nashville barflies. -
"I couldn't not speak about whiteness in my work," Garbus says of her new record as Tune-Yards. She breaks down the themes and self-examinations behind I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life. -
Some of the best rock music of 2017 was made by women reckoning with a fundamental destructive truth of the genre: that it promises freedom to young female listeners but withholds actual liberation. -
The queen of East Nashville talks about her new album, All American Made, working with Willie Nelson and what it was like to record at the legendary Sun Studios.
