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 new song "Magnolia Blues" by Adia Victoria is a courageous reclamation of the singer's Southern identity. Her new album A Southern Gothic is out in September.
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The South Carolina-born blues-folk singer possesses a remarkable grasp of the sounds and stories that make up the South. In "Magnolia Blues," she's joined by Margo Price and Kyshona.
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Welcome 2 America, the first posthumous album from Prince after his death in 2016, was released Friday.
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Confessional songs are all over the pop charts, from Tyler, The Creator's Call Me If You Get Lost to Olivia Rodrigo's Sour. What do musicians who blend fact and fiction owe their real life subjects? -
This single is another indication that the vintage soul game has a new champion team – and that disco sensuality will never fade away.
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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? -
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. -
The late John Prine was awarded artist of the year, and Black Pumas and fiddler Brittany Haas took home hardware during the abbreviated show. -
Country music's breakout star of 2020 performs three songs for her Tiny Desk quarantine concert, including "Black Like Me."
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Returning to a form he fell in love with after first moving to Nashville, the genre-defying singer recorded Cuttin' Grass Vol. 1 in just a few days earlier this year, after recovering from COVID-19.
