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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Buffy Sainte-Marie has always been a wandering soul with a fierce sense of direction. Watch her and her touring band perform four songs from across her long, innovative career.
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Wet Leg, the year's breakout indie rock band, just released a debut album full of loopy, addictive songs that are as fun to talk about as they are to listen to.
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NPR Music's Ann Powers moderates the first-time meeting of far-flung soulmates. Hurray for the Riff Raff's new album was inspired, in part, by adrienne maree brown's book Emergent Strategy.
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Bonnie Raitt's new single shows that the 72-year-old blues-rock treasure is the master of the form.
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On "The Man Was Burning," Blount spans the centuries to create an apocalypse for now.
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From her state-of-the-art home studio, the beloved singer-songwriter plays selections from her 2021 album, Ocean to Ocean, as well as a fan favorite.
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A fingerpicked song of regret that captures the nonlinear way memories form and solidify, fusing childhood injury next to adult heartbreak in a way that can make your head spin.
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The new documentary Get Back, cut from 50-year-old footage of Beatles recording sessions by director Peter Jackson, offers a chance to look at one moment when the myth of the "band guy" took shape.
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Across genre, styles and borders, these artists were all about connecting in a disconnected world.
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Blues singer and guitarist Buffalo Nichols brings a mid-twentieth century field holler into the 21st century.