Ann Powers is an American writer and pop music critic.
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. She currently writes for NPR Music

NPR Music

NPR Music launched in November 2007 to present public radio music programming and original editorial content for music discovery. The Web site is a project of National Public Radio, a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797...

, and is a contributor for The Los Angeles Times.

A Seattle, Washington native, she has written for many music publications, and her work has been widely anthologized. While still a teenager, she began writing about music in the now-defunct Seattle music tabloid The Rocket

The Rocket (newspaper)

The Rocket was a free biweekly newspaper serving the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, published from 1979–2000. The newspaper's chief purpose was to document local music. This focus distinguished it from other area weeklies such as the Seattle Weekly and the Willamette Week, which...

. 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. From 2001 until May 2005, she was senior curator at the Experience Music Project

Experience Music Project

The EMP Museum is a museum dedicated to the history and exploration of both popular music and science fiction located in Seattle, Washington...

, an interactive music museum in Seattle. After a brief tenure as Blender

Blender (magazine)

Blender was an American music magazine that billed itself as "the ultimate guide to music and more". It was also known for sometimes steamy pictorials of celebrities....

magazine's senior critic, in March 2006 she accepted a position as chief pop-music critic at the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

, where she succeeded Robert Hilburn

Robert Hilburn

Robert Hilburn is a pop music critic and author. As critic and music editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles have appeared in hundreds of publications around the world...

.

In 2005, Powers co-wrote the book Piece by Piece

Piece by Piece (book)

Piece by Piece is an autobiographical book by singer/songwriter Tori Amos and co-authored by rock music journalist Ann Powers. It was published in the U.S. in February 2005 and in the U.K. in June 2005.-Synopsis:...

with musician Tori Amos

Tori Amos

Tori Amos is an American pianist, singer-songwriter and composer. She was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and was noteworthy early in her career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument...

. The book discusses the role of women in the modern music industry, and features information about composing, touring, performance, and the realities of the music business. Powers and Amos complemented the publication of the book with the event "An Evening with Tori Amos" in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 on February 24, 2005, where they discussed themes explored in the book.

Powers was one of the winners of the 42nd Annual ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards (2010).

Powers is married to rock critic and teacher Eric Weisbard. They have an adopted daughter.

External links

• Articles by Ann Powers from the New York Times