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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Ann Powers considers the breakthrough of indie rock up-and-comer MJ Lenderman, and finds that he’s got some classic rock in his tales of romantic woe. -
"If I have to define my music in any way," Nick Cave says, "it's religious music." His new album is a gallery of encounters with spiritual, possibly divine figures, not all of whom are benevolent. -
In an era when connecting the tidbits of an artist’s private life can seem more important than following a musical thread between songs, West of Roan's Queen of Eyes revives faith in the power of the concept album. -
Bruce Springsteen, 40 years on from Born in the U.S.A., shows up on Bryan’s new album to offer the wisdom and regret of a lifetime of telling truths and spinning yarns. -
David Bazan's multi-part memoirs have blurred memories of his adolescence, but with the goal of being honest and accountable. NPR Music critic Ann Powers sees connections between Pedro the Lion's Santa Cruz and Jane Schoenbrun’s new film, I Saw the TV Glow. -
With The Tortured Poets Department, the defining pop star of her era has made an album as messy and confrontational as any good girl's work can get. -
Cowboy Carter has spurred plenty of discussion for being a groundbreaking country album. But for one critic, it calls to mind a cult favorite '70s psych-rock concept album. -
The song is many things: comforting, manipulative, cathartic, a little threatening. Most importantly, it is a vessel, which empties out at the chorus to accommodate whatever a listener brings to it. -
Recent songs by Maggie Rogers and Kacey Musgraves took NPR Music's Lars Gotrich back to a familiar sound and ethos. On this edition of 8 Tracks, we dream up a Lilith Fair lineup. -
The young Icelandic-Chinese singer, now a Grammy nominee, has been pegged by some as her generation's jazz savior — a burdensome role that arguably misreads her talents.
