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 young Icelandic-Chinese singer, now a Grammy nominee, has been pegged by some as her generation's jazz savior — a burdensome role that arguably misreads her talents. -
Jones lets the sun shine in on this jazz standard, but maintains a pensive undertone.
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The Brazilian singer Flora Purim helped create the sound of jazz fusion. Now, as she releases what she says will be her final album, it's time to give her artistic legacy its due. -
Greg Tate's death left an immeasurable hole in the universe of cultural criticism. Vernon Reid, Matana Roberts, Jared Michael Nickerson and Christina Wheeler pay tribute to his music as Burnt Sugar. -
The show, despite a delay caused by the pandemic and brief moments of seriousness, was mostly a highly professional, relentlessly energetic showcase for the pleasure of live music. Plus a few awards. -
These songs take on some of the ugliest stories in our history and reflect the commitment of Black musicians to telling the truth of how Black people have been wronged, and survived, and fought back. -
Covering the elusive Nick Drake is rarely successful, but Lizz Wright's smooth, trumpet-accented version of "River Man" has the right kind of self-possession. -
The singer takes a loving look back at the '70s and '80s pop that helped shape her. Along the way, without grandstanding, Krall strips away the baggage of the original performers' iconic personas. -
The soul singer keeps reinventing others' songs and himself. James' new album is more direct than his earlier material in some ways, and more experimental in others, but grounded in a soulful groove. -
On the new album Glad Rag Doll, Krall teams with producer T-Bone Burnett for a set of songs about love and independence that looks back to the style of the 1920s.
