Times pop music critic Ann Powers talks music and the music industry with her predecessor, Robert Hilburn

Ann Powers is the chief pop critic for the Los Angeles Times. She has been writing about music for more than twenty years, since she was a teen-age New Wave fan in Seattle, Washington.

She joined the staff in May 2006, after four years as a Senior Curator at Seattle's Experience Music Project, an interactive museum devoted to celebrating the spirit of rock and roll throughout popular culture. In her time there, she co-curated exhibits on subjects including the songwriting process and the history of disco, and helped organize the annual Pop Conference, an international gathering of writers, scholars and artists discussing popular music.

Robert Hilburn, who was pop music critic and pop music editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, is one of the most widely read and respected pop writers of the rock 'n' roll era. His reviews and artist profiles have appeared in hundreds of publications around the world.

Hilburn, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination committee, has interviewed and written extensively about every significant musician of our time, from John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen to U2 and Eminem.

Geoff Boucher is a feature writer for the Times who writes primarily on the pop music world but often veers into film, television and other area of pop culture.

Boucher has been writing for the Time since 1993 and for five years wrote extensively about crime with an emphasis on Latino street gangs, which lead to the publication in 1997 of his book, "Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz," a biography that details the life trajectory of a woman who went from gang member to battered wife to single parent to police officer.