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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A strained "Star-Spangled Banner," a decaf flat white of a halftime show and, of course, the advertisements: Super Bowl LII's musical moments were legion, if often little else.
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The title track from Joshua Hedley's forthcoming album Mr. Jukebox mines both country music history and his own experience playing for Nashville barflies.
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On a forthcoming record, the dynamic Nashville singer swathes his limestone-and-gravel vocals in horns and strings, expanding on a Southern soul sound.
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Tivel's characters are both common and unforgettable, and her prose paints their worlds in unforgettable colors. Watch a found-footage video for "Illinois."
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The fast-rising young Nashville songwriter finds transcendence in soul's leavening and the grease of rock 'n' roll. Brent Cobb's sophomore record is out early 2018.
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McPherson crossed several state lines before ending up in Nashville for his third album, Undivided Heart & Soul. The first single sounds like Link Wray and 1950s motorcycle movie soundtracks.
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With its infectious synth lines, Southern drawl and sly message, "Miss Prince" shows what's special about Republican Hair, a band unlike any other in Nashville today.
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The bluegrass-blessed ballad channels the experience of memories growing at once more vivid and more disordered — as they do for everyone, but especially for someone with dementia.
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Alabama's humid sense of wonder runs through The Secret Sisters' third album, You Don't Own Me Anymore. Visual folk artists Butch Anthony and John Henry Toney appear in the duo's new video.
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The Wu-Force's Wu Fei, Abigail Washburn and Kai Welch borrow a motif from Pixies' "Where Is My Mind" to soundtrack an inventive video for "Paper Lanterns."