Made For These Times

Though we didn’t know it at the time, the turn of the present century also marked the end of the album era. By which I mean a period wherein listeners approached music primarily through the medium of the album, and many LP releases were still recognized as significant contributions to a shared culture. Radiohead’s Kid A is frequently identified as the end (or at least the beginning of the end) not just because it was a much-anticipated release by a major band, but because the leaking of individual tracks on digital file-sharing services in advance of its release was seen as an event in itself. This was partly a matter of commercial concern (being a kind of theft, after all), and partly assumed to represent a compromise of the band’s artistic vision. Both of these views would quickly become passé.