#ann powers

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

“...on [The] Rolling Thunder Revue she brought down the house. They listened, rapt, to her musical contributions, and then…the songs she started to write testified to what came next. The most famous is “Coyote,” about the playwright and tour scribe Sam Shepard, with whom she dallied when she wasn’t flirting with The Band’s Rick Danko or trying to get Dylan to sit down with her for more than five minutes.”

—Ann Powers “Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell” (2024).

[nonesuchrecords]

Hurray for the Riff Raff (aka Alynda Segarra) celebrated the release of their new album, LIFE ON EARTH, in conversation with adrienne maree brown, the author of Emergent Strategy, an inspiration for the album, and NPR Music's Ann Powers. "I've been thinking a lot about my particular relationship with making art," Segarra says, "and how I feel like it's very important for me to face mystery. And to try to do it as bravely as I can, and to admit that bravery does not mean no tears." You can read the interview here.

[girlwithlandscape]

What is folklore if not a body constructed of memory?

Ann Powers

[npr]

Aretha Franklin's voice is the voice of America. No other contemporary artist embodied the nation's brash optimism with as much flair, nor exemplified its sorrow-forged resilience as convincingly. No one better expressed American joy. Her murmurs gave shape to a sensuality that defeated repressive moral codes and replaced them with the commandments of tenderness, of sweet bitter love. Her high notes made hope happen. When she sang, we remembered that we could walk on the moon.

Franklin, who died today at the age of 76, was a child of the African-American Great Migration that created our nation's version of modernity and of the golden age of gospel that formed the fundament of rock and soul. Her music did the crucial work of art in the 20th century: It captured the experience of living through profound change and showed how to preserve integrity in its wake. She was a central player in the civil rights movement, American democracy's fundamental historical struggle. The key words in Franklin's most famous songs — respect, freedom, the word chains turning in a deliberate slip of the tongue to change — articulate personhood by connecting the body to the mind, the feet that wander to the arms that hold loved ones close. And the voice that echoes in our memories, from its belly growl to those heaven-hitting squalls, embodies liberty itself.

Aretha Franklin Was America's Truest Voice

Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

[grandhotelabyss]

Respectfully, I must note that I inducted Lana del Rey into the canon just a little over five years ago. 

[taytay4ever]

The 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women

99. Taylor Swift

Fearless (Big Machine Records, 2008)

No listenership is cast aside with the same fervent damnation as young women—their interests are frequently written off with complete critical derision. Challenging that notion is best accomplished by being too damn good (and confident in that excellence) to ignore. So goes the success of the then-teenage Taylor Swift, a Nashville-via-Pennsylvania talent whose ideation reached its full fruition on Fearless, a self-written country-pop album of immeasurable catchiness. In "Fifteen," she writes from a place of newfound maturity, adopting a big sister role for those most affected by being young and vulnerable (everyone). In "Love Song," fantasy is grounded in intimate reality, a Romeo & Juliet metaphor imbued with restraint — she avoids grandiose gestures and instead offers timeless confessions. Fearless manages to play to Taylor's admiration for her female pop forbearers (Sheryl Crow is mentioned in interviews), the narrative songwriting of the country music she grew up on and her own personal hybridity. At its simplest, Fearless displays Swift as a brilliant songwriter. At its truest, the album shines with an explosive voice, an ineffable gift. No one can question Swift's success now, and Fearless proved it then. Just ask a girl. —Maria Sherman (Contributor)

NPR (x)

[pazsays]

This is why Harry Styles really might be rock's savior: He's not a rock artist. Instead, he's a pop polymath, like Adele, whose warm, emotionally resonant vocal tone he can nearly match; or like Rihanna, whose bulletproof nonchalance he emulates in his seamless encounters with the media. He's also an emblematic millennial, projecting entitlement but not grandiosity, simply claiming space wherever his laptop and hair products fit on the counter. Forming the persona that best suits his roving psyche, he's collecting himself in bits and pieces. "I always said, at the very beginning, all I wanted was to be the granddad with the best stories ... and the best shelf of artifacts and bits and trinkets," he told Crowe during his Rolling Stone victory lap. Bits and trinkets, electrified: That's the naked truth of rock and roll.

Ann Powers on Style of the Times

[npr]

A Conversation On The Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women+

All Songs Considered's Robin Hilton talks with Ann Powers, Marissa Lorusso and Sidney Madden about some of the greatest songs released by women and non-binary artists in the past 18 years.