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 producer and guitarist presides over a graceful concept album in which some of country and Americana's biggest stars reflect on home.
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The better half of Nashville's newest first couple steps out with a scorching blues take on Jimmie Davis' sad-happy classic. -
On her first album in 13 years, one of country's supreme redheads lays bare the joy that is her most potent gift as a vocalist.
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For decades, David Bowie helped young music fans realize that identity could shift, that you could love both reading and rock 'n' roll, that pop could hold lessons about love and integrity and grace. -
Adele's new album 25 had record sales in its first week — selling more than 2.4 million copies. We get a check on more pop music news from 2015.
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Adele's new album 25 had record sales in its first week — selling more than 2.4 million copies. We get a check on more pop music news from 2015.
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"Simple Song," White's first solo release since The Civil Wars broke up in 2014, will appear on the concept album Southern Family, produced by Dave Cobb. -
After making acclaimed albums with Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson and Chris Stapleton, producer Dave Cobb has quietly staked out territory as the man behind country music's roots revolution. -
For 2015, Ann Powers picked 16 albums to stand in for the stations of a musical life. Taken as a whole, they represent that old, perpetually useful cliché: Life is change. -
The founding member of Fanny, a groundbreaking all-female rock group, June Millington has everything it takes to be mythologized as a rock hero. Now she's telling her own story.
