Ann Powers Quotations

At the parking lot of the hospital, I saw all the police cars. I knew it couldn't be my mom.

Hip-hop has survived as a sonic practice more than anything else. It's an approach to music-making based in sampling and rhyming over beats, that's proven far more versatile than its detractors thought it would.

He couldn't hold a job and he wouldn't watch the kids while Amanda worked.

To some extent, the idea that rock 'n roll used to have this sort of free antediluvian identity, frolicking in the 1950s with Elvis or something, is totally wrong. It's insane. Elvis' relationship with Colonel Parker, his manager, was one of the most possibly corrupt, certainly lucrative, and intense business partnerships ever in rock n' roll.

He was wailing and snot was just pouring out of his nose.

Personally, I've realized that the tradition I thought of as too safe, too pretty, and too conventional is the space where women have been able to gain some practical ground. The area of music where we thought the status quo was really being upset - specifically hard rock - has actually remained the most male-dominated.

MTV definitely has the effect of narrowing the range of music that hits the mainstream. On the other hand, isn't that the effect of television in general?

You can't fool yourself anymore that your art is your art. When you're not getting paid for that song that's being traded back and forth among millions of people on the Internet, you have to think like a businessperson.

Emotions were running high. It was questionable at the beginning as to what happened.

We have to ask ourselves why younger women don't feel the need to be right up front with their politics. Is that going to set us back or is that itself a sign of progress? I don't know the answer.