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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How do we understand Blue in the 21st century? Can we think of Mitchell's 1971 album, long considered the apex of confessional songwriting, as a paradigm not of raw emotion, but of care and craft? -
The provocative pop star covers Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You" and performs two cuts from Plastic Hearts for her Tiny Desk quarantine concert.
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Is it possible to hear the music of 2020 without getting lost in the noise? NPR Music's critic Ann Powers studies a year during which nearly everything about loving music was turned upside down. -
Taylor Swift surprised her fans and released a new album Friday. Folklore is her eighth studio album.
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These songs take on some of the ugliest stories in our history and reflect the commitment of Black musicians to telling the truth of how Black people have been wronged, and survived, and fought back. -
NPR Music correspondents Ann Powers and Sidney Madden recommend a few favorite livestreaming performance series to check out while in-person concerts are on hold. -
Many artists around the start of the rock era pointed toward sex, but in his performance of "Tutti Frutti" and other songs, Little Richard enacted sexual excitement itself. -
Williams's catalog has, across more than a dozen albums, shaped Americana. Here's a map of her career's many high points. -
The music of this quintessential Nashville songwriter and lifelong independent spirit makes room for the wide range of emotions that careen through people as they stumble and dance through life. -
Roberta Flack is only solo artist to win two consecutive Record of the Year Grammys and she helped usher in an enduring style of R&B. Could she be pop music's most under-appreciated influence?
