Do you remember when studio albums told stories? When you bought a CD and listened to every song on it, in order? There was no shuffle, and if you wanted to make a playlist you had to burn it onto a disc, so musicians gave their albums narrative arcs, a thesis, or at least a consistent theme. There would be a single vibe.
But in the age of Spotify and YouTube and TikTok, that doesn’t happen anymore. Albums are designed to be torn apart, their constituent songs—and even certain hooks within those songs—sprinkled across the internet, one for every playlist. If you want to see what I mean, listen to Lady Gaga’s sixth studio album Mayhem, which was released Friday, and is the perfect album for the streaming era: something that doesn’t sound like an album at all.