The Economist’s pick of the best albums of 2024
A musical tour through pop, rap, rock and more
“Brat”. By Charli XCX
Part pop record, part zeitgeist moment. (This album spawned its own idiom: “Brat summer”.) In an age of focus-grouped relatability, the British singer-songwriter is refreshingly brash—and very good.
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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “In tune with the times”
Culture December 14th 2024
From the December 14th 2024 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
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Christmas films are cheesy, mindless and widely loved. Why?
The obviousness is part of the appeal
Was Henry Kissinger an AI “doomer”?
A posthumous postscript on a hair-raising topic
The novel was a dominant art form last century
What does the 21st century hold for it?
The unholy alliance of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin
Patriarch Kirill is one of the most vocal defenders of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine
Does great literature translate into great television?
Netflix hopes so, with its adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”
All of our favourite words of 2024
Explore gaokao, chiplets, kidulting and dozens more intriguing terms