Articles by Ann Powers

DOLLY PARTON is at her most delightful when she’s laughing at her own jokes. Read more

Control is the ruling principle of Janet Jackson’s career and, as far as the public knows, of her life. Read more

ONE OF the many prescient lines uttered by Corinne Burns, the New Wave Lolita played by Diane Lane in 1982’s “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains,” comes after the drug-induced death of a has-been bass player in the ladies’ room of a scummy Northeastern nightclub. Read more

Metallica Death Magnetic (Warner Bros. Read more

RUSSELL BRAND is a bad, bad boy. Read more

At one point during the Sunday night broadcast of the 25th annual MTV Video Music Awards, the action apparently switched from Paramount Studios to the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip, where the rock band Paramore’s performance was inciting a riot. Read more

LOOKING classic-casual in a summer blazer, gray fedora and matching silk scarf, Ne-Yo leaned over his laptop in a West Hollywood recording studio one mid-August afternoon, playing selections from “Year of the Gentleman,” his third solo album, out Sept. Read more

Everyone has had the experience of disagreeing with a critic, but do critics ever second-guess themselves? Read more

An electric drone wafted through the air before Radiohead took the stage Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl. Read more