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? -
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. -
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. -
Williams's catalog has, across more than a dozen albums, shaped Americana. Here's a map of her career's many high points. -
Spotify "data alchemist" Glenn McDonald has been regularly scanning the platform for new songs addressing the crisis, updating his master playlist along the way. -
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? -
Emerging as a major pop star in 2019, Eilish is emblematic of her moment: a rebel who is also a popular kid, a loud cultural presence emanating from a carefully maintained private place. -
These women made some of the most significant music of the past century. They originated genres, broke political boundaries, nurtured generations of followers and in most cases, became icons.
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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 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.
