Ann Powers

The Canadian rock band Arcade Fire topped the Billboard 200 albums chart this week. Their latest release, The Suburbs, sold 156,000 copies and edged out Eminem for the No. 1 spot. We talk with Los Angeles Times chief pop music critic Ann Powers about chart success means for this "indie" band.

Kurt takes a look inside Pandora — a music website that creates personalized streaming radio stations based on your favorite music — with founder Tim Westergren. And Los Angeles Times critic Ann Powers helps Kurt test the system's mettle, trying to build a station ...

Pop critics are abuzz about new releases from two provocative female artists. M.I.A. is set to release Maya, her first album since a nasty feud with the New York Times. Meanwhile, rocker Liz Phair has self-released an album that seems to lampoon herself – and M.I.A.

Pop critics Jim DeRogatis and Ann Powers discuss the uncertain future of music criticism.

This season will be Simon Cowell's last as judge on Fox's smash-hit American Idol. The caustic Brit everyone loves to hate is stepping down to bring his show X Factor to American audiences next year. Some say he’s brought diverse audiences together and made us all critics; others argue he ...

Beyonce's six awards set a record for most Grammys won by a female artist in a single night at Sunday's Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift took home the evening's biggest prize, Album of the Year. Joining us to explain what that means for the state of pop ...

Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, composer Steve Reich and indie hero Sufjan Stevens have all explored God in their music. We hear how these efforts and others fared with fans and critics. Guests include Ann Powers, chief pop critic for The Los Angeles Times, and Felicia Miyakawa, professor of musicology at Middle ...

Last month, the video gaming company Activision released its fifth Guitar Hero title. Controversy soon followed, as players discovered that a character modeled on deceased Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain could be made to move and sing in ways the real Cobain would never have done. Today, we hear from entertainment ...

Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, composer Steve Reich and indie hero Sufjan Stevens have all explored God in their music. We hear how these efforts and others fared with fans and critics. Guests include Ann Powers, chief pop critic for the Los Angeles Times, and Felicia Miyakawa, professor of musicology at Middle ...

Artifice in pop music has a long history - from Ziggy Stardust and his Spiders from Mars to Lady Gaga. Today, we look at the new wave of theatricality in music and why sometimes fake is what feels most real. Guests are Ann Powers, chief pop music critic at the ...

Michael Jackson was one of the most successful and influential entertainers of the 20th Century. He won 13 Grammys and sold 50 million copies of his 1982 masterpiece, Thriller. But his fame and reputation declined starting in the 1990s. When he died yesterday at age 50, Jackson was attempting a ...

He is a 27-year-old goth-vampire rocker who wears black nail polish and eyeliner. She is a dowdy 48-year-old Scot who says she has never been kissed. Adam Lambert and Susan Boyle overcame their unlikely personas to become the two most popular figures on television and YouTube – as products of ...

Forty years ago, The Who set the tone for rock operas with the album "Tommy." Everyone from Queensrÿche to The Decemberists have attempted this rite of passage, with varying levels of success. Now, Green Day is topping the charts with 21st Century Breakdown, an album about two characters and their ...

Like Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston, Madonna will spend 2008 attempting to reclaim the diva crown she once held. Her new album out today, "Hard Candy," is either the Material Girl's return to dance-pop form, or an aging star's sad trip down memory lane. (Either way, collaborators Justin Timberlake, Timbaland ...

Ann Powers, chief pop critic with the LA Times, and Colin Fisher, who researchs improvisation and creativity at Harvard University, discuss the role of muses in popular music why muses are so indispensable to artists.

Rap and country tunes top the list of songs that reference drugs and alcohol, according to a new study. We talk to the leader of the study, Brian Primack, from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Los Angeles Times chief pop music critic Ann Powers as we debate ...

Jay-Z rode the coattails of an "American Gangster." Sanjaya overstayed his welcome on "American Idol." And the industry's high anxiety over the future of music got, well, higher. Soundcheck kicks off "Critics Week" with a recap of pop music in 2007. We talk with Ann Powers, chief pop music critic ...

A new generation of producers is stepping out of the recording studio and into the limelight. Ann Powers, chief pop music critic of the Los Angeles Times, explains how the role of the producer is changing -- and why the new skill set recalls a different era.

"Open adoption" is where birth parents stay in regular contact with the adoptive parents. Dawn Smith-Pliner, the founder and director of Friends in Adoption, looks at how this changes things for the child, and music critic Ann Powers talks about her experience.

A growing number of retro-soul singers from the UK are taking over the album charts. Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" scored the highest ever debut for a British woman (number seven), and Joss Stone's "Introducing Joss Stone" followed a week later, debuting at number two. On today's show, LA Times ...