Sparks, Fun., Norah Jones and Jarvis Cocker imbue pithy vignettes with their own personalities, Jack White and Jack Black play with chirpy nonsense songs and Swamp Dogg’s soulful take on America, Here’s My Boy is heartbreaking. This is certainly more than an academic exercise.

Though certain tracks like In My Head leave you wishing she’d cut through the glistening sounds and breathy choruses with some power vocals, Mahalia’s pen is sharp, and her raw take on relationships and self-development is delivered with the diva attitude of Mariah Carey and the raspy cool of Erykah Badu.

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.

After the wild beach party of 2007’s Volta and the shiny wonders of 2011’s Biophilia, Vulnicura is a windswept trek of a record. But one which gradually repays its difficulties with the raw exhilaration of survival.

Badass has been criticised for failing to take his retro stylings anywhere new, but he lovingly recreates the Nineties vibe with an appealing low-slung swagger and infuses it all with a thoughtful, pavement-pounding philosophy.

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.

Her new album is a successful repetition of the formula: sweet, crisp country licks with witty twists of live-and-let-live philosophy.

Track for track, it’s the equal of anything Petty has released in a long and righteously distinguished career.

The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears.

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

Despite the album’s occasionally jolting stylistic shift from darkness to light, there’s something reassuringly well-crafted about Sable, Fable. In a world of fluff and mayhem, it feels solid, needed even.

Heartfelt, spirited, lyrical, moody and mostly magnificent pop rock.

Food for Worms is all the more exciting for its contrasts in brutality and beauty. It’s challenging, consummately constructed, and thrilling throughout.

If the song strategies seem predictable and the sentiments over familiar, the album as a whole still grips my heart and squeezes. I find myself wanting to listen to it again and again, and I can’t say that about every album I review.

This is a warm, bluesy album of country-fuelled rock ’n’ roll that oozes old-timer class.

The sound on this pivotal sixth album, however, is subdued, moody, even dark at times, the instrumentation stripped back to bare essentials.

Vega’s enduringly classy knack for quirky rhythm, sleek ideas and direct-but-detached delivery shines through much of this album, though it does suffer at times from the leaden, ye olde phrasing hinted at in the title.

There is nothing particularly original or surprising here, yet in a pop market that is all interesting edges, self-enclosed scenes and leftfield genres, Ryder offers a hearty return to the reassuringly obvious, pitched straight into the mainstream. A star is born.

They may have been left in the band's boot for a while, but there's nothing dead about them.

An adrenalised behemoth of a record which reasserts her position as one of pop's most compulsive pleasures.

The great joy of this late period album is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Lifetime Achievement is not so much a last will and testament as a bravura insistence on Wainwright’s intention to carry on living and loving for as long as he can.

Divine Symmetry shows that this metamorphosis didn’t happen without a good deal of huffing and puffing. Therein lies its intrigue, as the groundwork is revealed. ... It’s a fascinating journey.

King of a Land is unlikely to bring in legions of new fans – Yusuf’s Pyramid appearance will hopefully do that. But it’s a lushly beautiful album from one of pop’s master songwriters. Indeed, the medium is perfect – it’s just the message that is a little monothematic.

It’s not all perfect: every so often, the tracks swing from sounding like impossibly cool, experimental rock to, er, Coldplay. Overall, however, this is guitar music at its most thrilling.

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

There is a maturity and conviction to this album that makes it a step up.

In moments, it becomes too saccharine, particularly with the tooth-achingly twee track Darling. But .... When he then takes aim at rappers who fake their street credibility despite enjoying middle-class childhoods (probably a diss towards Drake), you’re reminded that there are few major label emcees still capable of such honesty.

This is an album that underlines the greatness of Dark Side, rather than challenges it.

Whatever philosophical conundrums are addressed, the gorgeously staggered harmonies on the chorus of Dares My Heart Be Free offer profound answers in the music itself, a tangible spirit of human connection that warms the cockles of Skellig’s querulous heart.

There is a tangible sense of joy in performance, although with no greater clarity of lyrical expression. ... His own work remains wilfully obscurantist, emotionally open and lyrically closed, as deep and meaningless as listeners are prepared to let it become.

Goulding’s spectacularly tremulous vibrato, raw mid-range and fluttery high notes imprint unique character on everything she sings. It’s a voice that can make even her “least personal” record sound very personal indeed.

Hurry Up Tomorrow is certainly a bold way to drop the curtain on a phenomenal career, a luscious pop epic about how awful modern fame really is.

It is an album bursting with epigrammatic phrases, ridiculous rhymes, huge melodies and provocative opinions. The sound is brash and arresting.

Sturgill Simpson has recorded an interesting album about the lure of home. Musically, it's a bold step away from the excellent Metamodern Sounds in Country Music (there's more soul and brass in A Sailor's Guide to Earth) but the songwriting remains strong and beguiling.

Brimming with both spiritual depth and astonishing musical dexterity, Shook feels contemporary and important, reflecting America’s present-day diversity and letting the disenfranchised speak.

The Texas-raised Malone proves genuinely good at this stuff, with a sharp lyrical wit and sweet singing voice that rises to heights of soulful passion when needs be, notably on the disco flecked What Don’t Belong to Me and twisty alt-folk of Nosedive (the latter with Lainey Wilson).

Here, leading lights of electronic music remix King Midas Sound's underrated debut album to striking effect.

You and I lacks the depths and textures of Grace--the intoxicating communion with other musicians, the wild strangeness of his own nascent songwriting and the assuredness that came with locating his place in music. Yet, even without all that, Buckley’s raw talent alone remains an astonishing thing.

While Caustic Love is clearly the work of a maturing singer-songwriter (shedding jaunty charm for depth and ambition), it finds the 27-year-old still skittering around in search of an artistic identity.

Rather than pivoting to rockstar to play the part, Cyrus is shedding some previous layers of industry artifice to speak to a genre that has always unleashed her voice from any electropop or hip-hop audience-baiting cage. Not only that, the arena of rock enables Cyrus to indulge controversy in provocative stage performances that needn't alert the cultural appropriation police.

It's real music for grown-ups.

His weary regrets are cradled in a simple, swaying hammock of piano, violin and mournful horns. ... It’s a miserabilist masterpiece.

Tension is Minogue’s 16th album, and certainly ranks among her best.

Chromatica offers Gaga at her most energetic and forceful, and that is something to behold.

Premonition is a finely wrought, searing career-coda, determined to take a sledgehammer to the cliché that growing older must result in complacency.

As a 40-minute listening experience, it’s equal parts eccentric and impassioned, thought-provoking and out-there – if not exactly fun, given the mental-health issues, then certainly liberating, nourishing and thoroughly memorable.

Pink Elephant doesn’t have quite the same swagger as earlier albums. It is almost too personal, like listening to a preacher begging for forgiveness from his flock. Yet the sheer power of Arcade Fire in full flight should be enough to restore any sinner’s faith in rock and roll.

His smooth but expressionless voice can be a little bland for a frontman (and is always improved by Thorn’s occasional harmonies) and his carefully considered lyrics have a tidiness that sometimes verges on the prosaic. Yet the gentle mesh of flowing melody, woven instrumentation and mood of hard-earned contemplation adds up to something quite profound.

As a generation of UK rappers comes of age, Hus still leads the pack with his pitless charisma, linguistic inventiveness, and musical curiosity.

Her charismatic force keeps things afloat. Music destined for a group workout class or M&S Christmas advert, maybe, but executed to a high standard and providing precious confidence and joy to a lot of people – and really, who can argue with that.

She’s at her best channelling the mature, suburban melodrama of vintage Tammy Wynette on Stay at Home Mother and the all-out D.I.V.O.R.C.E.-style heartwrench of Waterproof Mascara, on which a little boy’s mother thanks God for a cosmetic that “won’t run like his daddy did”.

Foals’ fourth album is an exciting, immersive experience that picks up where 2013’s Mercury Prize-nominated Holy Fire left off, adding epic arena rock muscle and lustre to their previously rather winsome and overly-cerebral style.

The familiar is as classy as ever.

Little Rope is undoubtedly Sleater-Kinney’s most commercial album yet. Crusader, in particular, brings to mind the palatable grunginess of No Doubt, and lead single Say It Like You Mean It – with a video starring Succession’s J Smith-Cameron – echoes WH Auden’s Funeral Blues.

The Nearer the Fountain may be Albarn’s most intimate, understated and impenetrable work yet. But if you are prepared to get lost in his self-involved hall of mirrors, you might just find yourself beautifully bedazzled.

His long gestating third album is every bit as fantastic as earlier offerings, stuffed with narratives of contemporary bohemian life; wordy, free-flowing verses giving way to singalong choruses, spiced up with perky, lateral hooks.

Behind its rather mundane title, This is What We Do contains multitudes of grooves, with both a positive spirit and a physical imperative that are nigh-on impossible to resist.

The playing is lovely, lilting and delicate.

The results may be a bit odd and unfashionable, but one of the great pleasures of Walking Like We Do is that it simply could not have been made by anyone other than The Big Moon.

His latest offering is powered by some lovely, liquid bass playing that offers a silvery thread through the textured mélange of disjointed electronic noises, splintered guitars and ghostly traces of strings. It is certainly not for everyone. But Ejimiwe’s relentlessly downbeat delivery may have finally found its moment.

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.

Bright character studies of predatory women, manipulative gurus, sleazy lotharios and outdoor sex fiends are peppered with non-sequiturs that force listeners to fill in gaps.

It is not very hip, and it doesn't really hop, but Sleaford Mods have arguably come closer than anyone else to creating a uniquely British form of rap: rant music.

This is stand-up-and-listen music, commanding attention in surprising ways. Being suggests that far from mellowing with age, Maal – who turns 70 in June – remains as eager and excited to explore new frontiers as he ever was.

Four decades into their career, Soft Cell have rarely sounded more current.

It is exhaustingly, daringly, bafflingly brilliant, but you might want to lie down in a dark room after listening.

Whether Pot Of Gold’s lullaby or any of Felt Better Alive is exactly hit material by 2025 standards is hard to say, but it’s wonderful to hear this wayward hero sound so happy to be alive.

There are a few moments here that feel like major label fodder, sure, but on the whole Kojey Radical deserves enormous credit for putting out an album that remains thoughtful and spiky despite its clear intention to get people dancing.

Gaga goes over the top and keeps on going: exhilarating, exhausting blockbuster entertainment.

A clever range of textures (from raw cello through stuttering piano to popcorn-light synths) keep things interesting and there’s a bravery in the way she spins inspirational lyrics from her long battles with addiction and bipolar disorder.

Nick Lowe is pop's master of pastiche, and this delightful collection of country bar-room and lounge ballads sounds like a game of spot the musical references.

Lambrini Girls’ music is not for everyone, but nor is it meant to be, and, taken as a statement of intent from one of Britain’s most hyped new bands, it’s a pretty ballsy one. Big d--k energy, indeed.

Harlem River Blues (Bloodshot Records) ranks alongside the best American roots music being made at the moment and his concerts should not be missed.

This may be the most raucously uplifting divorce album ever heard.

Flush with stirring, singalong melodies, they construct exciting, catchy songs that draw on the dynamics of stadium rock established by classic bands.

For the most part Divers is a magic carpet ride that finds Newsom still spinning wild (and generally impenetrable) interwoven yarns with the jaw-dropping dexterity of a modern-day Scheherazade.

Like many of his recent releases, it is bathed in qualities of ancient grace, a tender, philosophical, sometimes humorous looking back at life and forward towards death that reflects his advancing years, yet it also sounds astonishingly contemporary.

The all-female indie-rock quartet, have returned after a six year hiatus with fourth album Radiate Like This, and it feels more intimate than ever.

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

It’s easy to make fun of, but the melodies are uniformly gorgeous, the layered synth and string arrangements are bright and exciting, Smith’s singing is filled with pliant emotion, and it all adds up to a pop album so addictive that it feels as though it had been intravenously injected into my system.

The album is peppered with playful uses of samples. It’s deeply sophisticated music – an astute melting pot of genres bound together by the latest production techniques.

He continues the good work with sixth album The Night Chancers, a set of seductive, atmospheric late-night grooves on which Dury conjures sinister vignettes of insomniac dwellers of the wee small hours.

Inspired playing by Sam Sweeney (fiddle), Rob Harbron (concertina), Roger Wilson (guitar, fiddle), Ben Nicholson (bass), Toby Kearney (percussion), and guests appearances from Jon Boden (guitar, fiddle) and Martin Simpson (guitar) add to a delightful album.

Still channelling Lynyrd Skynyrd, REM and the Band, the rest of the Crows keep the tyres on the tarmac like pros.

Sweary, punky and bilious, Spare Ribs is unlikely to win over new converts but it is as good as anything in Sleaford Mods extensive oeuvre.

The performances are superb.

The Third is a hot, sweet pancake stack of danceable tracks, drizzled with drama and swung by a terrific horn section.

What makes this a really exciting debut, however, is the Kanye West-style genre-bending on Grenade, The Other Side and Our First Time, which joins the dots between between Michael Jackson and Bob Marley.

Great pop music with its big heart in the right place.

Packed with gospel choirs, church organs and soulful ululations condensed into a typically bravura tableaux of obscure samples, warped synths and spooky slabs of vocoder harmonies, Jesus Is King sounds as scintillating as anything in West’s considerable canon.

Those same multilayered textures [in Loveless] are all here, and if anything there are more finely chiselled planes of fresh variation: there is a discipline as well as wildness behind the distortion.

It's certainly good to have West's unique talent back in music, but this ambitious behemoth may be easier to admire than to listen to.

This is music with a big, gleeful smile on its face. And it is accompanied by clever and compassionate lyrics.

Mayhem is exciting but exhausting, a battering ram sonic assault. In such bland pop times, it’s good to see her parking her tanks back on the dance floor.

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.

Like Barrett and Wilson, Teleman indulge a whimsy that can tip into tweeness. But the melodic repetitions and slightly eerie echo around the guitar line give it a weird edge that works.

E3 AF marks his growth into an elder statesman of rap. Perhaps he sounds so assured because he’s embedding himself again in the sound that he helped to pioneer.

While the Stones may not have struck oil with these songs, their energy remains undimmed, their back catalogue endlessly renewable.