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 title track from the alluring Nashville duo's debut album could represent the love song of a dented heart — or the struggle to ignite a shared creative muse.
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In a story told with the help of dolls and circus characters, Americana's beloved ruffian couple reminds us to love each other's ripped patches and lumps.
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Catch a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Isbell and his band working with producer Dave Cobb to perfect the first single from Something More Than Free.
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Watch a sad, sweet rumination on grief from Old Crow Medicine Show's Gill Landry.
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This confident, sunny romp of a song proves Monroe's ready to take on the bro-country establishment.
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The lesson of "Cherokee," a room-hushing ballad by the Oklahoma singer-songwriter John Moreland, is how to live with grief. A stirring, gut-wrenching video matches the song's patient intensity.
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The Nashville singer writes his own version of the resurrected rhythm and blues sound his southern neighbors in the Alabama Shakes and St. Paul and the Broken Bones have taken nationwide.
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For any young artist, an important leap happens when influences are absorbed and the act of mining the past transforms into something personal.
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The instrumental group Steelism playfully blends vintage styles. It gets a perfect visual accompaniment with a parody of old British educational science videos in its video for "Marfa Lights."
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We all know what's most often excavated: Nirvana's roar, Biggie's cool murmur, the futuristic sigh of Aaliyah. But there's more to the decade than those obvious landmarks.
