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 star who commands a planetary position in the galaxy of pop chronicles divorce and soul-searching recovery on an album that thrillingly redefines her artistry by bringing her gently down to earth.
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NPR turns 50 this year, and we're marking it by looking back on some other things that happened in 1971. It was that year that songwriter John Prine released his debut album. Prine died in 2020.
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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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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.
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The late John Prine was awarded artist of the year, and Black Pumas and fiddler Brittany Haas took home hardware during the abbreviated show.
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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.
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Williams's catalog has, across more than a dozen albums, shaped Americana. Here's a map of her career's many high points.
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The music of this quintessential Nashville songwriter and lifelong independent spirit makes room for the wide range of emotions that careen through people as they stumble and dance through life.
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Spotify "data alchemist" Glenn McDonald has been regularly scanning the platform for new songs addressing the crisis, updating his master playlist along the way.
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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?
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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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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.