U2

Whither the protest song in 2026? In January 1970, John Lennon wrote and recorded ‘Instant Karma!’ in a single day and had it in the shops a little over a week later – no mean feat given the mechanics of physical record production at the time. Nowadays, when the practicalities of releasing music are infinitely more streamlined, it has never been easier for artists to react to current events within moments of them occurring. And with the febrile news churn packing a year’s worth of drama into each week, there is certainly no shortage of material.

Does Elon Musk have a good eye for the aesthetic? Earlier this month, the Tesla magnate took a break from his incessant political posting to praise something he described as a ‘work of art’ – the Las Vegas Sphere. He then treated his 200 million Twitter followers to a video of an awed crowd, desperately angling their phones to capture the supposed majesty of the Sphere. Admittedly, it was hardly the first time that the Sphere has gone viral on social media. Since its grand opening last autumn, this very modern monument has had a knack for conquering the internet, with videos of its optical illusions prompting both awe and disgust. Its occasional surreal turns (like when it turned into a giant cartoon emoji, side-eyeing the Las Vegas skyline) have made headlines in their own right.

Grade: D+ Happenings were interesting, or irritating, events staged from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s by performers who eschewed the corporate and bourgeois restraints placed on artists and veered into surrealism, parody, violence and, of course, situationism. Think Allan Kaprow and John Cage. In rock music, meanwhile, think the Fugs and the Pink Fairies. Happenings by our country’s most profitable faux-rawk outfit, Leicester’s Kasabian, is by contrast a celebration of everything happenings were most opposed to. It is boring, corporate, imitative, inane and gutless. I would almost rather listen to an album by Dua Lipa. It is 20 years since Kasabian’s first album and they have got no more interesting or challenging, but the cash flows in regardless.