Music Arcades: Billy Bragg: Must I Paint You A Picture? The Essential Billy Bragg

This is getting quite depressing: yet another album that I bought on the basis of it looking like a bargain (50 tracks, including ten on the third "bonus" disc, for £9.99), rather than on the basis of me loving Billy Bragg. Which I don't, really.

Billy Bragg's songs from 1984/6 seem more rooted in their time than The Smiths' — a sign that I've listen to them less since then. Every decade or so, Billy comes up with a knockout song. I'm thinking of Sexuality and Half English. The latter, however, isn't included here for some strange reason. That means I paid a bargain 20p per track for a lot of songs that I'm not that bothered about. And now I know why Life's a Riot is so short: 20 braggsongs in a row is heavy going.

I'm trying to learn from this. Bob Dylan's latest is currently on Amazon for £5.99 in a deluxe version with two CDs and a DVD. But is it really any good? If Bob would allow it on Spotify or We7, I'd check it out. As it is, I'm resisting the temptation.