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Pop critic Ann Powers shares a handful the albums on NPR Music's list of the best of the year, including the one album that nearly the entire team agreed on.

In a year when hip-hop was frequently absent from the pop charts, NPR's music critic found that looking in darker corners revealed a genre that was flourishing.

Singer Etta James died Friday. She started belting out gospel in church as a little girl, made her first pop record as a teenager, became Chess Records' first female R&B star and released her last album just a few months ago. Writer Gwendolyn Thompkins grew up listening to James and has this remembrance.

On this week’s 51%, we celebrate women in dance. We speak with a student at Julliard and take some lessons from a professional ballroom dancer, and we also speak with choreographer Helen Pickett about her creative process.

The gifted songwriter and singer wasn't a born superstar — but became something of a sleeper hit on the strength of his singing, songwriting and history-making collaborations.

In the new series “La Fortuna” on AMC+, Clarke Peters plays a character whose sense of right and wrong keeps him fighting despite the odds against him. Peters plays attorney Jonas Pierce, who starts working on a case that centers sunken treasure that probably belongs to Spain, but has been found by an American adventurer played by Stanley Tucci: Peters has been acting and directing on stage and screen for decades. He has also appeared in “His Dark Materials,” “The Wire,” “True Detective, “Da 5 Bloods” and many, many more.

A pep rally skit by three white high school students who wore blackface and parodied rapper Chris Brown's arrest for assaulting pop-star Rihanna has…

"Up to five million" is the phrase that keeps popping up in reports about President Obama's plan to take executive action on immigration. Who are they?

In pop culture, everything old gets recycled — and it's not just an American phenomenon. Reviewer Chris Nickson looks at a recent vogue among global artists for '80s cover tunes.

The third album from the British rock band Coldplay is called X&Y. For the past five years, Coldplay has been steadily climbing the ladder of pop music success. And with this record many in the music business believe the four soft-spoken Brits will earn the title "biggest band in the world."