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For many musicians, like storytelling superstar Adele, the order of songs on an album is a matter of the keenest concern, affecting how a narrative is presented, how listeners react and ultimately how many albums are sold.

That is a big reason why customers of Spotify saw “play” as the album default option Sunday on the world’s largest audio streaming service, so songs will be heard in the order they appear on an album — though users can still elect the “shuffle” option.

Adele, whose much anticipated new album “30” shot to the top of the charts within hours of its release Friday, is among the artists who have campaigned for the “play” choice, and in announcing its change Spotify specifically mentioned her.

“As Adele mentioned, we are excited to share that we have begun rolling out a new Premium feature that has been long requested by both users and artists to make play the default button on all albums,” a spokesman for the Swedish company said.

“For those users still wishing to shuffle an album, they can go to the Now Playing View and select the shuffle toggle.”

Adele took to Twitter to express her thanks.

“We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason,” she said. “Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank you Spotify for listening.”

The English singer/songwriter, winner of 15 Grammy Awards and 2016’s Billboard Artist of the Year, is known for songs that combine raw, deeply personal feeling with strong musicality.

On her album “30,” Adele, her voice sometimes breaking, sings about her divorce and the guilt, depression and self-doubt that followed — a story she wanted listeners to hear as she had crafted it.

“There is always a story to be told as you listen to an album,” Andrew McCluskey, a song curator for the music to platform, wrote online. “Even if lyrically it doesn’t make sense, you can create a sonic and emotional journey with correct song placement.”
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Members of Afghanistan’s women’s youth development soccer team arrived in Britain early Thursday after being flown from Pakistan with the help of a New York rabbi, a U.K. soccer club and Kim Kardashian West.

A plane chartered by the reality star and carrying more than 30 teenage players and their families, about 130 people in all, landed at Stansted Airport near London. The Afghans will spend 10 days in coronavirus quarantine before starting new lives in Britain.

English Premier League club Leeds United has offered to support the players.

Britain and other countries evacuated thousands of Afghans in a rushed airlift as Kabul fell to Taliban militants in August. Many more people have since left overland for neighboring countries in hopes of traveling on to the West.

Women playing sports was seen as a political act of defiance against the Taliban, and hundreds of female athletes have left Afghanistan since the group returned to power and began curbing women’s education and freedoms.

Khalida Popal, a former captain of Afghanistan’s national women’s team who has spearheaded evacuation efforts for female athletes, said she felt “so happy and so relieved” that the girls and women were out of danger.

“Many of those families left their houses when the Taliban took over. Their houses were burnt down,” Popal told the Associated Press. “Some of their family members were killed or taken by Taliban. So the danger and the stress was very high, and that’s why it was very important to move fast to get them outside Afghanistan.”

Australia evacuated the members of Afghanistan’s national women’s soccer team, and the youth girls’ team was resettled in Portugal.  

Members of the development team, many of whom come from poor families in the country’s provinces, managed to reach Pakistan and eventually to secure U.K. visas. But they were left in limbo for weeks with no flight out of the country as the time limit on their Pakistani visas ticked down.

The team got help from the Tzedek Association, a nonprofit U.S. group that previously helped the last known member of Kabul’s Jewish community leave Afghanistan.

The group’s founder, Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, has worked with reality TV star Kardashian West on criminal justice reform in the U.S. He reached out to her to help pay for a chartered plane to the U.K.

“Maybe an hour later, after the Zoom call, I got a text message that Kim wants to fund the entire flight,” Margaretten said.

Kardashian West’s spokeswoman confirmed that the star and her brand SKIMs had chartered the flight.
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