Who is popular today?

Less bitter than Reputation, Lover has something for everyone, especially Swift’s boyfriend, but is she treading water?
The deluxe version of Taylor Swift’s seventh studio album comes with a facsimile of the singer’s journal. It contains selected diary entries that make for surprisingly glum reading. We see Swift progress from wide-eyed 13-year-old (“I heart school!”) to one of the world’s biggest stars: the latter the source of considerable woe. There are complaints about fans outside her house, worries about her relationships failing due to “the nasty world that just wants to ruin things” and about 2016, when her personal woes, including her mother’s cancer diagnosis, were compounded by public spats with other artists – most notably Kanye West – a succession of think-pieces bemoaning her awfulness and, most mind-boggling of all, her unsolicited adoption as a figurehead of the American alt-right after she declined to endorse a presidential candidate. “This summer,” she writes, from the thick of it, “is the apocalypse.” Continue reading...