I read this but have no real opinion on it because I do not listen to nor care about albums. But I did read it all because I love music.
This bit made me laugh:
Britney Spears’ 1998 debut album, … Baby One More Time, is a journey through the mind of a heartbroken teenage girl as imagined by a small team of male songwriters and producers, hailing largely from Sweden
That’s the whole problem, too, with Lorde’s albums after her first one. Stupid-ass Jack Antonoff and company took over songwriting and she lost her authorial voice. Lorde went from sounding like a tetchy, bratty but intelligent young woman to what an unimaginative and unexceptional 36-year-old man’s idealized version of what such a person would sound like.
And that worked about as well as you’d expect.