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 Harlem Shake can be called many things — a rewriting of history, theft, a cultural bridge — but it's not the first time a dance craze has taken the world by storm. About a century ago, nearly the same thing happened. -
The nominees may seem to reflect our era of infinite playlists, but where the Grammys are concerned, some surprisingly traditional ideas still endure. -
On Saturday night the band unexpectedly released its first album in 22 years. Ann Powers, Lars Gotrich and Otis Hart spent Sunday soaking in the band's new wall of sound. -
Sunday's display of imperial charisma comes off as a historical inevitability, and as something that benefits us all. It's an illusion, but what a substantial one. -
After a year when men dominated the mainstream conversation about progressive R&B, a number of women are poised to take the mantle in 2013. Here are a few worth watching. -
Recent Oscar-nominated films, along with an experimental new album by alt-pop singer Petra Haden, remind us that movies are as much about what we hear than what we see. -
"Suit & Tie" is the first new song in six years from Timberlake, the actor and singer who is better than almost anyone at making celebrity a job without losing face. It's no accident that the song is an ode to the power of looking good in the spotlight. -
Before the new year's hype cycle takes over, here are ten albums at risk of being overlooked that are worth adding to your list for 2013. -
Listening to Natalie Maines' cover of Pink Floyd's song "Mother" in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings made sense. Maines released her version, which takes the sting out of the song by showing the vulnerability in each of its characters, on the soundtrack of a movie about the West Memphis Three. -
