Ann Powers

Ann Powers (born February 4, 1964) is an American writer and pop music critic. She has written for many music publications, and her work has been widely anthologized.

Powers was raised in Seattle, Washington. During elementary school, her first poem was published in Our Lady of Fatima school newspaper. In her teenage years, Powers wrote about music in the now-defunct Seattle music tabloid The Rocket. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and a Master of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Powers studied literary theory. She wrote about music, feminism, film, and religion. She became a pop critic of the Los Angeles Times.

Powers is married to Eric Weisbard, who is a professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama. They currently live in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. They have an adopted daughter.

Powers has been writing about popular music and society since the early 1980s. The author of such books as Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America and coeditor of Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap, she has written for various publications like the New York Times, Blender Magazine, and the Village Voice. Powers has been writing for The Record, NPR's blog about finding, making, buying, sharing and talking about music, since April 2011. She currently writes for NPR Music, and is a contributor for The Los Angeles Times.

A female critic and journalist for a popular, male dominated industry, Powers’ work critiques the perceptions of sex, racial and social minorities in the music industry. She considers herself a "generalist" and critiques music from several genres. In the past she has studied literary theory, been a museum curator and written about topics such as religion, feminism and film. After a brief stint at the New York Times in 1992-93, she was an editor for the Village Voice from 1993 until 1996, then returned to the Times as a pop critic from 1997 until 2001. During this time and even into 2003, Powers wrote articles for the NY Times that centered on everything from Rock ‘n’ Roll to Classical music, folk to the Four Tops. Notable articles included "Jesus was a Loan Shark" in 2003, "When a Rock Star Goes Political" and "Sex, Death and Rock ‘n’ Roll" in 2002, "MUSIC: The Year in Classical Music: The Critics’ Choices; A Canadian Bard and a Texas Tenor From 2001 until May 2005, she was senior curator at the Experience Music Project, an interactive music museum in Seattle. After a brief tenure as Blender magazine's senior critic, in March 2006 she accepted a position as chief pop-music critic at the Los Angeles Times, where she succeeded Robert Hilburn.

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