"Make Believe" is classic Weezer, further refining the template of unthreatening heavy metal riffs... welded to smart lyrics, largely of satirical nature, and infectious melody.

How the mighty have truly fallen.

Lopez mostly sticks to a successful formula - R&B lite with a Latin touch.

The record has some horrific moments, nearly all of them Borrell's.

Lopez' voice frequently sounds a trifle thin accompanied by the sort of sounds that we're better used to hearing behind a Creative Source or Gwen McRae vocal but the honeyed backing massages any real concerns from your mind.

Feeder are in danger of being a schizophrenic band, unrecognisable from their once “trademark” sound and prone to style swings on a whim.

Brave is actually one of her strongest albums to date.

Awesomely anodyne, breathtakingly boring and crushingly clichéd, â??Astronautâ? singularly fails to take flight.

It's not that Foxx can't sing.... It's not even really the lack of stunning songs. It's the fact that his super slick, super smooth R&B hasn't been either cool or fashionable for more than a decade.

A record that surgically removes all trace of sensuality and replaces it with calculated, mechanical, by-numbers bump'n'grind action.

Nelly and Akon do a reasonable job of making 'Body On Me' sound almost like a single, but it's not enough to change the fact that what could well be the best album of Ashanti's career is almost certain to be her most overlooked.

Beyond the artificiality of this album's every attempt to be loved, what's most surprising is Pharrell's failure to program so much as a decent beat.

Wisely though, they've seen this as a time to consolidate, not experiment or wander off on the tangents which have undermined them in the past.

The album, taken as a whole, is remarkably disjointed, because eight of the 13 songs on it have been written with the intention of dominating a different corner of music land.

The thing is, charisma and human warmth – or at least a plausible facsimile of them – are vital to the success of a ballad. And the bald fact is that Beyoncé and her handmaidens are utterly incapable of faking sentimentality.

There's none of the ABBA or Cardigans influence she claimed, nor any of the fun she seems to have in real life. For now she just sounds like another of pop's Stepford Wives.

Focused, slick and likable as “Rebirth” undeniably is in places, the fact that the Limited Edition comes with a sample of Ms Lopez’s new “Miami Glow” fragrance, confirms, that it’s still just another shameless exercise in brand extension.

"The Others" is no masterpiece, but it offers up a warm, beating heart where its rivals offer cold, cynical eyes.

"The Pick Of Destiny" is likely to be among the finest cock rock albums about magical plectrums released this year.

Good or bad, everything here sounds like a lesser version of someone else.

'Invincible' is an album almost unbearably mired in schmaltz.

His 12th album is so girly it should be wearing pink tights and a tiara.

Who You Are doesn't entirely deliver, but even when its songs fall short of the promised hype, their potential is obvious.

It's the state of the great man himself that's truly depressing. If the slurring on 'Murder' (pronounced muurrrerrr) is an attempt to sound like a stroke victim, it's worryingly convincing.

It's, well, a thoroughly professional record. And therein lies the problem. Method Man, perhaps more than any other Wu-Tang member bar ODB, has personality to burn, and trying to force it into a box fit for any other hit rapper is an impossible task.

Given the fact there are 25 tracks and a platoon of songwriters spread over Doll Domination's various bonus discs, it's not surprising that it occasionally succeeds, and there are hit singles to be found here.

It is a rarity: a proper album, from a proper pop star.

He still fires the occasional lyrical blank and his guitar playing has less of the sparks of the past, instead settling into a role complementing the songs rather than dominating them.