Fenian is an immensely enjoyable record. Chara and Bap have a great natural sense of flow, able to syncopate phrases in a way to ensure the punchlines hit.

It’s a tremendous return, and all the more gratifying for its honesty.

A playful record that pushes in different directions without straying too far from the Seventies dancefloor brief.

This is a solid, saloon-door-slammer of a country classic.

There’s a sway to the melodies that slip around you, supportive but unassuming, like an old friend’s arm around the waist.

The Swedish pop innovator take charge over nine expertly produced tracks, exploring matters of sexuality, relationships and desire with playful candour. It’s brilliant, too; Robyn’s voice is commanding but also curious, enveloped by tremendous salvos of house and electronic sounds.

Her appetite for the heart-on-sleeve razzle dazzle of it all is glorious. This Music May Contain Hope is a pure audio spectacle that will have you screaming for an encore.

She tries her hand at new instruments and darts boldly between genres. As a consequence, Girlfriend can be a hard record to get a grip on. But it’s the ideal album for anyone else on the comedown from 2025’s Brat summer who now yearns, with Ives, to be “drinking up the day”.

Trying Times falters slightly in its final third – “Obsession” registers more as a sketch than a song – but these are minor frictions in a record whose emotional logic is otherwise unerring.

By stepping away for a minute, allowing any fears of getting left behind to cease, Styles has been able to return with newfound clarity and, more importantly, music that actually sounds like him. He let the light in, and it shows.

Over 15 tracks, a giddy mix of moods, genres, cultures, languages and time periods is woven together with virtuosic ease by Anoushka Shankar’s liquid sitar, Johnny Marr’s shimmering guitar and Ajay Prasanna’s gliding bamboo flute.

Gracie Abrams’s light graze of a croon skates elegantly over the sweet, piano-driven “Badlands”. Guest-free highlights include the delicately plucked “Alleycat”, resonant “Stay” and “Conversations with My Son”, which skips along its gorgeous acoustic guitar solo while Mumford’s lyrics pledge enduring love and support.

Charli proves herself much more in tune with the terrible complexity of Brontë’s original vision than Fennell: there are no inverted commas around the emotion expressed on this record. A windswept, gothic triumph.

At times Locket’s sheen can flow rather frictionlessly over your ears, pretty but perhaps a little mass-produced. Yet it’s an album that reveals deeper, more enduring layers and real emotional skin beneath all the shiny fabric and pouty poses.

Celeste sings like a woman striding in confident slow motion away from a massive explosion. Shaken, but determined to be heard.

Music purists can entertain themselves all they like by debating whether this is “true” classical music. The rest of us can revel in what is possibly the best album of the year.

Everything on this record feels more focused than anything she’s done before.

This intense story-driven format lets her sound sharper, smarter, and more clear-eyed than before. .... Allen sounds newly alive in the contradictions we loved her for: acid-tongued and soft-hearted, ironic and sincere, broken again but alright, still.

There’s a lot of human heart pumping beneath the bangers here. Be prepared for your mascara/fire-pit kohl to get smudgy. Because It’s Not That Deep actually sounds like the work of a woman who’s done some serious digging in order to party this hard.

Deadbeat starts intimate and confessional, with what might be the best opening track of the year. .... From there, the tracks flow and blend hypnotically, tied together by the piano. Sometimes a song’s coherence is sacrificed to tranceyness, but hooks keep bobbing to the surface like lava lamp bubbles.

At the height of his powers on this long-awaited follow-up to 2022’s Reason to Smile. .... Don't Look Down is a superb album, his best to date.

The Life of a Showgirl might be one of her most uneven records, but she’s as compelling as she’s ever been – the showgirl, the ringmaster and the circus all in one.

It’s rare for music to be both deep and breezy, isn’t it? Minnie Riperton does it on “Lovin’ You” (1974) – all those casual la-la-la-las sinking into something profound. Corinne Bailey Rae did it too, with “Put Your Records On” (2006), flagging the nourishment of some much-needed downtime. Olivia Dean’s second album, The Art of Loving, manages the same feat.

Sprints are smarter, and louder, than ever before.

Here for It All doesn’t exactly shake things up, but it’s a pretty, polished affair all the same, Carey sitting comfortably on top of her sonic throne and uninterested in relinquishing it any time soon.

This record’s greatest strengths (and weaknesses) lie in Young’s bold, blatant and occasionally bewildering commitment to being messy.

Perimenopop is destined to get listeners hot and bothered; Ellis-Bextor remains as cool as ever.

The highs on That’s Showbiz Baby are so thrillingly nutty that it’s hard not to be all-in with the idea of Thirlwall as Britain’s galaxy-brained saviour of pop – at least by the time album two rolls around.

Big Thief have done it again. Despite the 2024 departure of their bassist of nine years, Max Oleartchik, the Brooklyn-built indie band’s sixth album sounds like another instant classic.

The key to Flyte’s music is just how evocative it is, setting the scene perfectly and drawing you into their world.

These are songs that you can immediately tell will come alive on stage, where CMAT’s effervescent energy is really let loose. On record, they’re still a good listen – but it’s the words, honest and precise, that will keep fans coming back.

From the lovely momentum of “Carousel”, complete with fairground chimes, to the shivery, spellbinding flair of “Forget-Me-Not”. She’s as compelling as Julie London on “Silver Linings”, as heart-rending as Sam Phillips on the bold, surprising “Sabotage”. It’s sublime.

It’s an utterly cohesive record, perhaps to a fault; the individual parts end up consumed by the whole. If you vibe with it, though, Anhedonia has made an album that has real depths to explore – it’s just a matter of finding the right frequency.

If Bite Me isn’t the consistently massive deal Mean Girls fans might have hoped for, it’s still pretty fetch.

At times, Dog Eared can feel like being let into a luxurious, vintage cabin at dusk. Sheepskin rugs on wooden floors, low lighting, open windows. At other times, it’s at risk of becoming classy, crepuscular wallpaper. But given time and attention, the confident craft of the songwriting and mellow musicianship will sink their grooves into the soul.

Far from being burned out (or being bullied into selling out) by the sudden wave of global fame, they’ve doubled down on their own weird energy. Moisturizer's uncanny electricity is off the voltmeter.

Tempest plods a little through his breakdown of the social issues – poverty and addiction – facing modern Brits. There is power and truth in his weary clarity, but it can also feel a little prosaic. The pace, if not the mood, picks up on “Breathe” as Tempest addresses gang culture and describes a scene in which he found himself with blood on his trainers, delivered over a jittery trap beat that recalls Mike Skinner.

For all its promise that it never quite delivers on, I Quit is still another cool step in the band’s evolution – as well as a great way for fans to get their own step count up.

Addison Rae may have started out as an internet personality, but Addison earns her a seat at the pop table. Rather than a work of fluke or novelty, it marks the arrival of an artist who knows exactly what she’s doing.

She distils her pain, venom and eventual acceptance into 13 perfectly executed songs.

More accomplishes in just three songs the transition between fan-settling familiarity and creative advancement.

Boys These Days – in step with recent records by fellow leading alt-rock lights Fontaines DC and Wolf Alice – is blind to restraints of era or genre, a work of invigorating emancipation rock.

Doherty remains a charismatic scene evoker – even though you can’t follow the thread of all his tales, he still makes you feel you were there.

At times, Yorke moonwalks into self-parody with lines such as, “What's the purpose?” But such sixth-formery is compensated by the gorgeous melody and elegant phrasing of “Bugging Out Again”, so beautiful it's hard to hear with your eyes open.

A warm and inclusive record.

It’s cool to hear Vernon choosing fun at last. It’s a decision that’s opened up a whole new court for his melodies to play in. A slam dunk.

The album's direct confrontation with ageing and death serves to intensify these artists' joyful, companionable celebration of life. Outsized, old-school, dad-rockin' fun.

Gaga’s return to outsider-empowering form could not be more timely. At a moment when America’s leaders seek to shove its marginalised citizens back into the shadows, she invites them back into the centre of the floor, celebrating their defiant differences in the bright strobe lighting. Maga? Oh nah-nah!

Open Wide melds the confidence of youth with the poise that comes from experience. It's the sound of a band who’ve truly come into their own.

Sensitively produced by Marta Salogni, the result is both seductive and hypnotic. .... I may already have found my album of the year.

The Purple Bird is reassuringly well-crafted and woodsy.

The transitions here are remarkable; skipping a single track feels akin to jumping three chapters in a novel. .... It would be easy to dismiss this album as indulgent – particularly after Tesfaye gave everyone the collective ick in HBO’s ludicrous misfire of a series The Idol – but Hurry Up Tomorrow is impressive for its ambition alone.

Can’t Rush Greatness is a bold statement, yes, but one that Central Cee does, by and large, live up to.

It’s defiantly weird, rawly explicit; at times, it does wander around in vague search of melodies. But it’s also a gorgeous grower of an album that blossoms with different details each time you hear it. The overcomplications and stickiness are part of its prettiness.

At times, the tracks loosen up to the point of unravelling completely. Yet Balloonerism remains a rather wonderful, albeit unsettling, reminder of a talent lost.

Although Cain is clearly pushing away one type of fan, this album is destined to bind others more closely to her. While I can’t work out when I’d choose to listen to it again, Perverts is distressingly exquisite. Repeated plays guarantee sonic Stockholm syndrome.

It’s relentlessly interesting – a cleverly crafted new noise around every corner.

Armatrading has proved more than willing to evolve down the years, but How Did This Happen is mostly a welcome return to familiar sounds and ideas. She produced the album at home, playing all the instruments herself (as she has done for decades) with considerable slickness.

It was worth the wait, of course.

It’s a superb album, full of welcome surprises.

So even if this is an elegy for FJM, it’s a rather wonderful one.

Too Cold to Hold is also one of this year’s most acute depictions of 21st Century turmoil.

Nothing revolutionary about From Zero, then. But certainly a re-energised return to business for a band that has been sorely missed.

Gillespie has never quite had the voice to match his colossal ‘tude. But he can still channel the back-alley menace of a truant teen.

Songs of a Lost World is just eight tracks long, although it’s so immersive you’ll lose track of time.

It’s a record that celebrates motherhood as an expansion of creativity, rather than the stifling of it that she had expected.

Tension II feels bolder, tougher and more inventive than its predecessor, while still flowing directly from the same fun and fizzy vibe.

Jelly Roll is still finding his place in the world – you can hear that in his songwriting – but the polish and potency of this album suggest he’s almost there.

Cutouts feels a little like the cheeky younger sister of Wall of Eyes. The arrangements on that second album skewed traditional; more sombre and vulnerable in tone. Here, there’s a newfound vibrancy perhaps taking cues from Skinner’s jazz background.

It’s always been their melding of sounds that has singled them out. That glorious, flagrant disregard of genre is on full display here, a merging of sensibilities smooth as a rich, dark rum.

It can, at times, feel like you’re on an interminable carousel circling round and round again, but there are moments of pause. Every time you’re about to fall off the ride, a song will crop up grabbing your attention once more.

Wild God can feel fathomless, but it leaves you buoyant.

The whole thing is delightfully caffeinated: Short n’ Sweet is full of hiss and steam, grinding gears and deep kicks beneath the shining chrome surfaces.

Breezy, Smiths-esque indie folk closer called “Favourite”, featuring a guitar riff that could’ve fallen off Viva La Vida…, evinces the depth and richness that new producer James Ford (replacing Dan Carey) has brought to the band on a record that leaves post-punk in its dust and roars off into broad new horizons. Potential fulfilled.

Although this album loses some of his distinctive sound – and has none of the cool experiments of Beyoncé’s record – it also showcases his undeniable song-crafting chops.

The songwriting on This Is How Tomorrow Moves has a deeper confidence to it, allowing Laus to embrace the sweet, hooky melodies, which swell above her Nineties-indie-inspired sound.

There’s a wickedly infectious energy, wit and filth to her confrontational braggadocio.

While he may have grand notions of his own artistry, it often – in Atlanta, or in his very best music recordings – lives up to it. Bando Stone may be the work of a man high on his own metaphorical supply. But more likely than not, you’ll end up high on it too.

Happenings finds the Leicester band on synth-corroding, speaker-rattling form, with Pizzorno banging out big tunes and splashing out big, bell-bottomed chords. .... The slower songs still keep the tunes rolling.

By the time the album closes on “Lose My Wife”, it is clear that the “sweet sexy savage” persona of Kehlani’s seminal 2017 debut is alive and kicking.

Imagine Boudica painted by a pre-Raphelite and you’ll get a sense of this record’s softly swirling string tendrils and dreamily plucked harps. That said, there are also some shield-banging electro-beats to ensure the relatable rawness of everyday life comes battering through.

A debut this assured is rare but, then, Tems evidently is an all-or-nothing kind of artist. Just as her lyrics show her turning away from romantic distractions (she craves real connection), so, too, do her songs make it clear that she’s in it for the long haul.

BRAT is a hedonistic, ultraviolet collection of songs whose thumping – slightly disorienting – club beats more than succeed in their aim of “capturing a feeling of chaos”.

A record that whispers its way through a marvellous maze of music to deliver some big emotional wallops.

It’s a happy surprise to find a fresh, shiny energy-driving CWPHF. The tunes are sparkier, tempos more varied and the sonic textures cheerier, as though the band were given a clean shave and a hot lemon-scented towel.

Urgent, upbeat, demanding and funky, Lipa is a finger-snap personified throughout Radical Optimism.

There’s nothing revolutionary about this very solid release from a kitemarked institution of an act. But Nonetheless proves that the Pets have still got the brains, still got the hooks. And their canny cultural commentary remains on the money.

The result is a record that is by turns lush and ethereal, a sonically cohesive venture into slightly unfamiliar territory.

Musically, Dark Matter is some of their catchiest and punchiest material in years. It’ll have you nodding your head – but it’ll never let you get comfortable.

The whole album is a terrific reminder of the intense, personal connection Swift can conjure in song.

Even if you don’t love This Could Be Texas, it’s a hard album not to respect. English Teacher have well and truly arrived: the class had better pay attention.

On Don’t Forget Me, she’s found a beguilingly relaxed momentum.

It’s a record that sucks in all of the band’s best-known sounds and blows them out in a wild confetti blast of twisty-indie-anxious-punk-jazzy-joy.

Variously embracing fado, jazzy whiskey-bar blues and tensile, grandiose strings, ... Eastern Esplanade is easily The Libertines’ most expansive and ambitious record.

Their rock’n’roll friends, from Beck to Noel Gallagher, are on hand to lend the album a rabble-rousing tone. Ohio Players sounds like a house party where the whiskey is flowing.

Across 27 tracks, almost all with compellingly muscular melodies, she whips and neigh-neighs through every conceivable form of classic and modern country, roping in elements of opera, rock and hip-hop at her commanding, virtuosic whim. .... Cowboy Carter keeps on dealing aces.

There are more hooks here than on Lenker’s previous albums, 2020’s great but ethereal Songs, and its companion album, the lyricless Instrumentals. Tracks like the gentle, mellifluous “Cell Phone Says” showcase Lenker’s skill with a soulful folk guitar riff, while the lively and finger-picked “Fool” is a standout.

The songs on Tigers Blood feel natural and unstudied.