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?
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Taylor Swift surprised her fans and released a new album Friday. Folklore is her eighth studio album.
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At 79, 74 and 87 years old, respectively, these three veteran songwriters prove that it's possible to release poignant and powerful work late in an artist's career.
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In a new song and video, Anderson .Paak and video director Dave Meyers take a hushed look at the lives amidst the movement.
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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.
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As part of NPR's series "One-Hit Wonders / Second-Best Songs," NPR Music's Ann Powers nominates "Jesse" by Janis Ian. She's known mostly for her 1975 hit "At Seventeen."
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NPR Music's Ann Powers and Rodney Carmichael discuss albums they're looking forward to, as well as the artists they're begging to come back.
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Bikini Kill's instant anthem for the '90s riot grrrl movement found new purpose at rock camps, where young girls learn to express themselves through music. Hanna breaks it down with NPR's Ann Powers.
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Her music has been sung at marches and political rallies, heard in churches and on chain restaurant jukeboxes. Everything popular music can be is there in the songs of Aretha Franklin.
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The results are in for our reader poll, and your picks for the greatest albums made by women deeply modify and sometimes openly challenge our original Turning the Tables list.