Once upon a time, musical artists sweated over their albums, arranging the tracks in just the right order, or using them to explore a single concept or theme. The chaotic, click-driven demands of streaming have put an end to all that. In The Free Press, River Page uses Lady Gaga’s latest release – covering every genre from techno-club pop to light rock to Taylor Swift parody – to lament albums’ loss of musical coherence. “It’s a mess,” Page explains.

A Spite That Knows No Bounds
Gratingly awful global scold Greta Thunberg’s latest stunt is to turn on her own motherland. Sweden has been very good to her, but the former social-democratic paradise’s mugging by the realities of uncontrolled immigration do not sit well with the keffiyeh-clad rabblerouser. “For years, Sweden took more asylum seekers per capita than any other country in Europe,” writes Fredrik Karrholm in The Spectator. “Now asylum numbers have fallen to their lowest level since 1985.”


