The Next Great American Songwriter Would Prefer to Stay Home

One of the coronavirus pandemic’s many terrible legacies is the slow smothering of ambition in popular culture. In the depths of the crisis, media—music, movies, and all the rest—were widely hailed as a “balm” for anxieties and a “lifeline” to the shared society we could look forward to someday returning to. Yet at the same time, that pre-pandemic sense of cohesion was being destabilized. Entertainers emerged from lockdown to find their fans wild-eyed with obsession and everyone else utterly…