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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On Wednesday night, during their first headlining tour in a decade, the Chicks showed off the many ways they've always been more than the usual Music City act. -
After stints in Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, Kathleen Hanna still finds new ways to rage and inspire. On her new album at the helm of The Julie Ruin, she transforms anger into a source of power and fun. -
Ann Powers and Jewly Hight, NPR Music's team in Nashville, dive deep into the country music industry's biggest annual party and report back on what's in store for the genre in the coming year. -
The country singer-songwriter's second album boasts a big sound. But it keeps beautiful details intact, as Clark speaks for those often pushed aside within traditional storytelling narratives.
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On Rae's third album, the singer-songwriter's fleshed-out jams and delicate, jazz-informed ballads examine the subtle trajectories emotions can take.
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The music of the singer Anohni, who was previously known as Antony Hegarty, has long explored identity. On her new album Hopelessness, she turns self-examination into explicit, unsparing activism. -
In the nearly four decades of music Prince made, propriety and prejudice were regularly vanquished by good humor and elegant lust. -
For Simpson's first album since his 2014 breakthrough, the inventive country singer crafts a highly personal song cycle about order and insubordination.
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Is Vinyl's latest fictionalized New York music character a tribute to Jobriath, the post-Bowie 'space clown' who was rock's first openly homosexual performer? -
The event, centered around an initiative to educate girls and young women, reflected a reality in which hip-hop's influence is acknowledged and women are central to the conversation.
