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 grassroots country star, whose fan base crosses lines of identity and politics, is releasing a song called "In Your Love," from a new album. Its video tells a queer, Appalachian love story. -
PJ Harvey's new album, I Inside The Old Year Dying, builds off of a narrative poem she wrote about a year in the life of a 9-year-old girl in a fictional town in western England.
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Harvey talks with NPR Music's Ann Powers about her album I Inside the Old Year Dying, a ragged, highly crafted adaptation of her epic poem Orlam, and why she prefers to make art without boundaries. -
Four decades into his career, Lloyd Cole's On Pain finds this purveyor of guitar pop still exploring that hazy space where people question themselves and make excuses or promises they might not keep. -
The beloved singer-songwriter performed in front of more than 20,000 fans at an idyllic amphitheater in rural Washington state. -
Listening to Kesha's new album, Gag Order, you can't help but think about all she's been through in the past 10 years.
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In her Tiny Desk, Tivel's empathy elevates her folk-based, jazz-touched compositions from mere stories to secular prayers. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with NPR music critic Ann Powers on the rise of interpolation in the increasingly litigious music industry and the line between nostalgia and theft.
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At the reinstatement of expelled Tennessee lawmaker Justin Jones, a small gathering of Nashville musicians opened up the People's Songbook for a musically imperfect yet unforgettable Bob Dylan cover. -
A pop critic looks at two benefit shows in Nashville that put a rainbow-hued spotlight on the way a buzzword like "visibility" can become more than symbolic, especially in moments of crisis.
