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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Now that Taylor Swift has left Nashville behind, a handful of other up-and-coming stars are showing how country crosses over with other genres — and hoping for success that does the same. -
Erstwhile country singer Taylor Swift has a new sound and a new goal: to be the world's biggest pop star, with all the attention and provocation that comes with the job.
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It's striking how little current pop hits reflect the angst and anger that have dominated this summer's news. But critic Ann Powers finds that one of 2014's biggest songs offers unexpected guidance. -
"Radioactive," by Imagine Dragons, just set a chart record for the longest run on Billboard's Hot 100. It's just one of a few songs on the charts showing the influence of religious themes. -
The story of 2013's wild-haired teenage pop phenomenon has more than a few parallels with the 1991 emergence of grunge kingpins Nirvana, but recast for the millennial age. -
We all know what's most often excavated: Nirvana's roar, Biggie's cool murmur, the futuristic sigh of Aaliyah. But there's more to the decade than those obvious landmarks. -
Thanks to brand new songs by pop's shining lights, including Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Nine Inch Nails, this midsummer week unexpectedly became the beginning of a new hit cycle. -
Bland's music is the kind that can school anyone about the incomprehensible depths of love, the importance of dignity and the promise of the kind of good life that really might be within reach. -
On Born Sinner Cole appealingly frames the unwieldy subject of inheritance as a musical reckoning with the '90s, the era of his childhood and hip-hop's current favorite source of nostalgia. -
Nashville the city, Nashville the TV show, close-harmony groups and two financially viable, independent-minded singers have shattered country music's glass ceiling — and the year's only half over.
