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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There's almost nobody better at creating complex musical worlds, but on her new album The Age of Pleasure, Janelle Monáe's aim is to stop thinking. Or at least start thinking about feeling. -
The Portland singer-songwriter trades in twang for psychedelia on a plane-spotting song that captures a fluctuating melancholy.
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Listening to Kesha's new album, Gag Order, you can't help but think about all she's been through in the past 10 years.
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In her Tiny Desk, Tivel's empathy elevates her folk-based, jazz-touched compositions from mere stories to secular prayers. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with NPR music critic Ann Powers on the rise of interpolation in the increasingly litigious music industry and the line between nostalgia and theft.
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At the reinstatement of expelled Tennessee lawmaker Justin Jones, a small gathering of Nashville musicians opened up the People's Songbook for a musically imperfect yet unforgettable Bob Dylan cover. -
A pop critic looks at two benefit shows in Nashville that put a rainbow-hued spotlight on the way a buzzword like "visibility" can become more than symbolic, especially in moments of crisis. -
In filmmaking, placing a song in just the right context and letting it cast its spell is an art — one that many films in 2022 mastered. What if we gave that achievement its own award? -
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." -
Tonight's Grammy Awards may be big for Beyoncé and her album "Renaissance." The new artist category is also one to watch with bluegrass, jazz and hip-hop - even a rock band from Italy.
