Ann Powers
Critic and Correspondent, NPR Music
Ann Powers is NPR Music's critic and correspondent. She writes for NPR.org and she can be heard on NPR's newsmagazines and music podcasts.
One of the nation's most notable music critics, Powers has been writing for NPR 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 the web, 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.
![Jarvis Cocker formed Pulp in Sheffield, England in 1978, when he was just "I've always loved pop songs and I like the way [they make] you feel. But I always wanted to try and put something that is slightly inappropriate in the lyrics."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/7246x4076+0+701/resize/300/quality/85/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F3a%2Fc3%2F24aa3a324c9ebb27054d690f1ec1%2Frough-trade-pulp-095.jpg)
