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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Music shouldn't be treated like a game to master — it should be treated like something that affects and potentially changes you. -
Charming critics and audiences with New Threats From The Soul, his funny, loose, reference-packed album, the veteran Louisville musician is having an unlikely breakthrough at 40 years old. -
In the latest Superman film, Lois Lane and Clark Kent have a fight about what's more punk: edginess or kindness. The fate of something more than the mosh pit hangs in the balance. -
The Beach Boys' co-founder, songwriter and producer transformed pop music into high art and became America's answer to The Beatles' Lennon and McCartney in the process. -
Morning Edition looks back on the best albums of 2023 — many artists are drawing on subcultures and folk music to reach smaller audiences.
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Alynda Segarra is one of the most adventurous spirits to ever come out of the Americana music scene. Segarra is better known as Hurray for the Riff Raff.
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A new year means a lot of new music. But what's worth checking out? A sneak preview of what you should be listening to in 2022.
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NPR Music critic Ann Powers reviews a new docuseries called "The Beatles: Get Back". It centers around hours of unseen footage of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. -
NPR turns 50 this year, and we're marking it by looking back on some other things that happened in 1971. It was that year that songwriter John Prine released his debut album. Prine died in 2020.
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This song's story always must be told and heard again; we have not yet moved beyond the need for its witnessing.
