The Gift is a quixotic compilation of tracks. ... One of the things that comes across most impressively in this afro-futurist mix of hip hop and R’n’B is that it all sounds fresh and exciting but not remotely alien or intimidating.

Across a baggy 18 tracks, Egoli maintains a sense of purpose, but only comes into sharp focus when a particular artist grabs the reins.

Sheeran has delivered a solid commercial showcase of the power of contemporary pop music brands. It is a case of Superstars Assemble. A fan base shared is a fan base multiplied.

You can hear the ghostly outline of OK Computer looming amid the gloom and distortion. Also palpable is a growing ambivalence. ... For every scratchy, hissing road to nowhere, there’s a sublime bit when Jonny Greenwood’s guitar cuts through and York starts to howl like a sad but vaguely vengeful pop demon. And suddenly all your misgivings tumble away, and it’s a privilege to be lost in the labyrinth of Radiohead’s collective subconscious.

Creating songs for female artists, he fully (if somewhat licentiously) inhabits their personas, deadpanning about greeting a lover in his camisole over the electro pulse of Apollonia’s Make-Up. The highest compliment that could be paid to Originals is that if Prince had released it in the Eighties, no one would have batted an eyelid.

Individual songs don’t matter quite so much as the overriding mood. Compared with the brash appeal of Uptown Funk, I’m not sure you could really describe these as bangers. They are more like Catherine wheels spitting flames into the night before burning out. And all the lovelier for it.

It’s bleakness on a stick. But Anima is also a dystopian rhapsody that will stay with you long after the moment and rates as one of the purest expressions yet of Yorke’s devastated world view.

Springsteen drives proceedings with acoustic strumming, the rough tones of his voice rooting the symphonic gorgeousness in gritty reality. It stands comparison with his very best solo albums. Lyrics offer character sketches, lives caught with a few deft lines and evocative melodies.

Madame X sounds like three different albums fighting for space. There’s the Latin pop album, in Madonna performs straight-up sexy dance duets aimed at the world’s fastest growing music market. There’s a strand of trendy, low-slung, sensitive trap pop that lacks the majestic swagger you expect from a grand dame of the game. And neither of these elements sits comfortably alongside the Mirwais spine of fizzy art pop marrying mad production with inflated lyrical themes. Madonna says she is fighting ageism but she is fighting on too many fronts at the same time.

The atmosphere is ultimately so paranoid and competitive, he makes being a rap star sound exhausting. Ignorance Is Bliss is at its most interesting when Skepta's volatile emotional state pushes to the surface of his combative persona.

If a great cover version should reveal new dimensions in both song and singer, then this album is filled with them.

This is bold, weird, beautiful stuff, but the listener has their work cut out getting to it. Ironically, the core of I Am Easy to Find is not particularly easy to find. At all.

Oh My God is a spiritual album for a secular age, one that tries to distil a sense of the divine from the very act of making music.

At times, Koenig is reminiscent of Paul McCartney in nursery rhyme mode--tunefully sweet and silly. Yet Koenig’s pithily epigrammatic lyrics throw a bit of intellectual grit in the mix, even if they possess all the clarity of a cryptic crossword.

Cuz I Love You is absolutely splendid, a joyous album to put a smile on your face, a song in your heart and your booty on the dance floor.

It sounds modern and old fashioned at the same time, infused with an adolescant self-absorption that is at once depressive, funny and wise beyond its years.

If you like quality songwriting delivered with panache, On The Line is on the money.

This is not so much pop music, as music that might make your ears pop.

Lyrically, Hozier aims high, addressing social and emotional issues against a backdrop of political and generational anxiety. He uses bold, mythic imagery with a playful spirit that hints at the dark wit of Leonard Cohen.

As a body of work, Crushing feels small, intimate and inward. But these are big songs, full of big ideas, from a big talent.

An album that ultimately serves as both an emancipation and a proclamation, Grande fully bending her collaborators to her will instead of merely playing in their sandboxes, and creating a blissful fusion of pop and R&B that is entirely her own.

Hall’s deadpan tones offer the same strangely reassuring grounded presence on the opening track, a bullish political anthem Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys. Yet with its slick funk and soul groove, I can’t remember the Specials ever sounding quite so smooth.

An all-killer, no-filler approach ensures every track pulls its weight, yet the album never quite adds up to more than the sum of its pleasant parts.

[James Blake's] most fully-realised album to date. ... Dizzyingly romantic.

Van Etten evokes Eighties electro pop. You can almost see the dry ice and excessive mascara. The atmosphere is doomy and gothic, creating an underlying tension that casts her lyrics of devotion and self-forgiveness in a shadowy light. It’s as if she can’t quite commit to her own happiness.

This album is the two-and-a-half-hour soundtrack. And it is an absolute performance masterclass.

A tone of urgent honesty pulses through the album, a visceral need to connect that shatters the production's glittering surfaces.

Delta is their best album yet, spiritual solace wrapped in secular anthems.

Whatever your political convictions, it is impressive to see a veteran superstar doing something to challenge and potentially alienate listeners. Streisand's 36th album is at once an overblown, schmaltzy epic, and a bold rallying cry that has the courage of its convictions. You won't know whether to cringe or cheer.

Real emotion never gets old. Honey is moving in more senses than one, a hypnotically groovy dance floor opus, set to the beat of Robyn’s tender heart.

This is the closest he has ever got to recreating the mesmeric intensity and emotional release of Urban Hymns. He has thankfully ditched the electronic effects that tried to lend 2016's These People a vestige of pop modernity.

They are peppered with witty lines but, like an over-repeated punchline, the humour wears thin. For all its gorgeous highlights and overall brilliance, Love Is Magic is an album that is hard to love.

Nelson co-writes many of Gaga’s songs too, which essay a slightly awkward journey from rock balladry to slickly superficial pop. In one sense, there is a tangible jump in standards as Gaga comes to the fore on the second half of the album--she is a major musical talent. But there is also a weird disconnect as the soundtrack shifts gear to anodyne modern pop.

Wanderer is an album of peculiar little songs that you won't hear in anyone else's catalogue. It is ungainly, odd, and at times almost amateurish. For some, Cat Power will always sound slightly unfinished. For others, it is exactly that quality that makes her records ring with raw truth.

It is a testament to just how utterly robust these songs are that the results are, inescapably, joyous. The recordings have been given a bit of digital oomph, with all the sounds polished and honed, and levels kicked up a notch, so the result is dense and shiny, with a relentlessly modern attack.

For a flag-waving LGBTQ artist riding the transgender express, the secret of Letissier's crossover charm is that she never lets polemic get in the way of a slick hook. It may be pop with a purpose, but first and foremost it is pop with a damn catchy chorus.

The toughness of Weller's art remains fully present here. An album of beauty and depth, True Meanings is further affirmation of a particularly sincere and probing talent, for whom music is a vocation rather than a career.

It is the sound of an old rocker at full steam ahead, determined to keep on rolling for as long as he can.

At a time when hip hop has become the default music of choice for the masses, it’s a reminder of the genre’s subserve roots--and evidence that, deep into middle age, Slim Shady’s power to shock, offend and amuse endures.

Grande can really sing, which is a treat in this Auto-Tuned era. Her four-octave range has been compared favourably to Mariah Carey’s, but her style is far more delicate and understated. She rarely unleashes full power blasts but her delight in singing is transparent and her producers take full advantage, layering her all over the tracks.

Lurking behind the sisterly triumphalism, though, is a conflicted message about being rescued from the shelf (“All before I lose my faith/ Just like magic, he came and saved my fall from grace”), and it has the unfortunate effect of turning a march of the Valkyries into a last stand of the spinsters. But sexual politics aside (and we will get to that), All Saints’ new album is pretty great, one you wished they had made back in 2001, when people might have cared.

The Now Now ultimately sounds exactly what it is: music made on the road as an escape from homesickness.

The 12 track Volume 1 of Scorpion is a sharply focused hip-hop album, with Drake delivering eloquent zingers over stripped back beats and spine-tinglingly atmospheric hooks. ... Meanwhile, the 13 track Volume 2 showcases Drake’s flip side, sensitive R'n'B loverman whose simple two-note melodies offer nights of pleasure on dance floors and in bedrooms yet somehow always end with broken hearts (usually his).

Welch's singing throughout is extraordinary, shifting gears effortlessly from melancholic softness to high-powered exultation, even ululation. Every gasp, growl and fluttery trill seems perfectly placed.

Beyoncé impressively matches her superstar rapper husband in terms of lyrical swagger, rhythmic flow and verbal bounce. That she does it to a backdrop of samples constructed around her own extraordinary singing lends the record's mantric grooves the luxurious sheen of high-end pop.

Every track is polished and purposeful, but the sheer busy quality of her singing and overactive variety of the production ensures that Liberation never settles into a coherent listening experience.

A side project should be challenging and unusual; it should stretch the boundaries of the artists involved. Since that is what this characterful, strong, self-contained album does, you really have to like it or lump it.

It is as if one of the saddest albums you will ever hear is masquerading as a set of party hits. Nevertheless, No Shame should be compulsory listening for every young wannabe who still thinks pop stardom will be a panacea for all their problems.

Ye is an album about Kanye’s state of mind, his family, and a narration of what’s been going on in his “shaky-ass year”. The beats are great. Lyrically, it’s fine. Whatever you think of his politics, his songwriting, sample-hunting and beat-making remain dynamic, surprising and ballsy.

All Bay has really done is exchange one set of generic production clichés for another.

The music is stark and edgy, with inflections from doo-wop and heavy rock. Songs are ephemeral, and not easy to decipher without listening to them repeatedly.

The album that emerges from all this is both busy to the point of overload and proof of a complex, inspirational figure in full command of his many gifts.

Dirty Computer establishes itself as a contender for album of the year, in more ways than one. The witty, interlinked songs tackle subjects that have fuelled much of the discourse around “woke” social consciousness in the age of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.

What I like most is the sense that these two musicians are beyond caring about perceptions, simply determined to have fun. 44/876 is a treat for grown-up fans of either artist.

Apart from the smattering of country inflections, there are no great surprises in store.

Even the simplest songs here are studded with magic moments that shift the centre of gravity.

There is ultimately something sketchy about Boarding House Reach, pulling in so many directions that it suggests rough drafts for more fully formed work to come. But for all that, there are so many rich ingredients in the mix, even misophones should find something to soothe their troubled ears.

The focus is always on the smart, economical, classically constructed songs, boasting memorable verses, catchy choruses, intriguing lyrics and peppered with tremendous instrumental breaks. This is an album of conviction and purpose, from a band you can believe in.

For all Byrne’s other endeavours, music is the forum where his quirky, zany, challenging ideas achieve emotionally satisfying expression. American Utopia is another glittering offering from an old master.

Despite its relentlessly downbeat content, then, Moby’s music is just too satisfying to be depressing.

Record’s producer Ewan Pearson pushes her back, fruitfully, into an electronic setting. This creates quite a retro, Eighties sound, linear and stratified, with pulsing bass synths and tidy drum machine patterns. But it lends Thorn’s wry, sharp lyrics a welcome sparkle.

As protest music goes, it is not particularly uplifting. Yet despair is kept at bay by the sheer majesty of the lush, dense, beautifully sculpted, wonderfully alien sound.

Always Ascending is every bit as smart and dynamic as their acclaimed debut, but familiarity has dampened its dramatic impact.

Man of the Woods pitches unevenly between town and country, with folky campfire songs about the joys of nature arranged around electronic rhythms and electro funk. The two strains don’t really get along. When it’s bad, it’s cringe-inducing. But when it’s good, it’s world-beating.

It is bright and busy, peppered with guest appearances. But the risk is that this extremely versatile star winds up sounding like a guest at his own party.

The album has a bruised but tough essence, which comes across in 10 elegantly tailored songs detailing a disintegrating relationship.

Despite having been layered and processed through Autotune, her voice conveys genuine intimacy. Cabello had a hand in the writing, and a few songs convey a charming honesty and vulnerability, perhaps a relic of the album’s original themes. But there remains a gulf between the craft of commercial pop and the artistry of confessional songwriting, and there is not much doubt about which has been prioritised on Camila.

Like his misogynistic streak, his sound is stuck in the past. What keeps our attention is his exuberant delight in language itself, such as his geometry pun in River: “this love triangle / left us in a wrecked tangle”. (Say it aloud).

It showcases U2 at their most mature and assured, playing songs of passion and purpose, shot through and enlivened with a piercing bolt of desperation.

Simultaneously beautiful and befuddling, dazzling and irritating, Utopia has something of Stravinsky or Stockhausen about it. On some level, it may be a work of brilliance, but I suspect it is too far adrift from the rest of pop culture to appeal to anyone but a Björk devotee.

Low in High School, his 11th solo album, is as dazzling and infuriating as anything in his canon, full of the stuff that has made the 58-year-old former Smiths frontman one of the most provocative and adored stars of our time.

Reputation is a big, brash, all-guns-blazing blast of weaponised pop that grapples with the vulnerability of the human heart as it is pummelled by 21st-century fame.

The Thrill of It All is stripped back to bare emotional bones, shot through with vulnerability and sensitivity, not so much wearing its heart on its sleeve as proffering an open vein.

It is hard to get overheated about something so determinedly tepid. And yet, dropped amid the frenzy of pop radio, Horan’s songs are immediately distinctive.

What gives it freshness and conviction is Liam’s performance.

Concrete and Gold is an ambitious and entertaining album. But when it comes to a comparison with Sergeant Pepper, it doesn’t earn its stripes.

The lyrics are fantastic, the grooves irresistible, the ideas constantly entertaining. His sense of fun is infectious. It’s good to have James Murphy back doing what he does best.

Del Rey has sometimes been characterised as a modern day torch singer but on Lust For Life she sounds like she is finally ready to take that torch and burn down her ex’s house with it. Lust For Life lets a bit of light into the darkness of Del Rey’s moody past works, hinting at emotional recovery without drastically altering her sensuous musical palette.

A sense of sisterhood is a huge part of Haim’s appeal, yet the humorous camaraderie and rocky swagger they present on stage all but vanishes in the studio.

With a rare display of vulnerability and contrition, grace and grown-up wisdom, Jay Z has delivered one of the most mature albums in hip hop history.

There is a palpable depth of feeling and meaning in her songs, operating on both personal and universal levels, delivered with subtle dynamism and dizzying imagination. She is a breath of fresh air with the power of a hurricane.

The more time you spend with each song, the more it sounds like a variation on something you’ve heard done better before, a formula in search of a hook.

[Giles] Martin and co-engineer Sam Okell have done a loving job, getting away from some of the oddities of the familiar stereo mix done by Abbey Road engineers. ... It is like seeing a favourite movie again in high definition. It doesn't replace the original, it enhances it.

This album is a belter, a shout-it-to-the-rooftops, punch-the-sky, yell-along-at-the-top-of-your-voice storm. It is crammed top to bottom with monster riffs, anthemic choruses and the sheer exuberant thrill of being young, in love, and armed with a fuzzbox.

Relaxer dazzles and delights the ears yet still feels like the work of a band who might have something to say, if they weren’t too precious to actually come out and say it.

Styles’s curveball is more eccentric but more appealing, with an endearing quality of relish in its musical adventures. It is so old-fashioned it may actually come across as something new to its target audience.

From the headlong punk-meets-acid-house charge of Ill Ray (The King) to the stadium campfire singalong of Put Your Life on It, Kasabian deliver hooks, headshots and upper cuts in a barrage of punchy sounds and aggressive attitude.

If you were enchanted by Skeleton Tree’s other-worldly sadness, Lovely Creatures offers an extraordinary illustration of Cave’s restless creativity. It leaves you relishing the possibility that the best is still to come.

Humanz is a giddy celebration of unity in difference, the sound of eccentrics, weirdos, outsiders and freaks partying together in defiance of convention. It is music where anything goes, as long as it’s got a groove and a heart.

Splashes of new musical colour correspond with a growing confidence and maturity in the songs themselves, but the overall mood remains intensely vulnerable.

The personality that emerges here is surprisingly gentle, with lots of slow jams about self-awareness, positive personal philosophies and respect for others. Musically, it would seem that Alicia Keys is a stronger personal role model than Rihanna. For all the swagger, then, Kehlani proves rather more sweet than savage.

The band add welcome bite to proceedings with the result that this album is immensely more satisfying than Garvey’s fussy 2015 solo debut, Courting the Squall.

Process seems unlikely to make Sampha a household name in his own right. Yet it has a drama and intensity that should increase his influence on those who already are.

It is a reminder that, beyond the thrill-seeking singles, the mainstream audience still favour meaningful, emotional songs, delivered with passion. Rag ’n’ Bone Man’s debut is full of them.

It is the second half of the album that actually shows why country persists against all odds: at its best, it is unafraid of telling stories that dig deep into ordinary lives.

His peculiar mix of antagonism and soul-searching may not be enough to convert non-believers, but this bold, ambitious debut suggests that grime has found its most accomplished ambassador yet.

Every track on Volcano flows beautifully, almost overloaded with hooks and harmonies, and charged with rhythmic intent. But the soundscapes are infinitely brighter and weirder and more thrillingly modern.

It is another gem in an already glittering canon.