This is an album in which Mumford embraces and forgives his own, to deeply moving effect.

Less successful is spongy new song One Heart, One Voice, on which Streisand, Ariana Grande and Mariah Carey ladle up sickly sweet lyrics and vocal sprinkles about onto the bland whipped cream and jelly of a sub-Disney love trifle. .... Bob Dylan makes more effective conversational space for himself on the 1934 jazz standard The Very Thought of You – the five o’clock stubble of his devoted rasp leaning into her silky sass as a breezy harmonica blows a fresh dynamic through the old tune.

Views genuinely makes for mesmerising listening, even if much of the album seems to consists of lazy meanders through Drake's psyche.

Built around pianos and acoustic guitars, with lots of strings and harmonious backing vocals, it feels sleek but self-contained, akin to a Carole King album glossed up for modern listeners.

At times his roar-throated tone gets repetitive, but Denver singer/songwriter Esmé Patterson adds subtle vocal contrast on the haunting Silent Key.

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

High Flying Birds is the best collection of Gallagher tunes since his Morning Glory days.

Her second album, however, belatedly delivers on all Goulding's latent promise.

His voice has never sounded better, but it’s the lyrics that let the album down overall.

It can be a little underwhelming but it is music with its heart in the right place.

Throughout, the music remains a bit distant. It’s as though Hakim, despite all he feels, is making a comment on the otherworldly and ineffable nature of love. Like a kite itself, love doesn’t stay still. It floats, moves and pulls you in different directions. Just like this collection of songs.

The result is a quirky and poignant little time capsule.

Mildly soulful, rarely unpalatable, the Chili Peppers keep delivering American fast-food for the ears, even as they enter their sixties.

In the past decade, it seems Jones has made a sneaky transition from dinner party backdrop to David Lynch soundtrack.

It Won’t Always Be Like This amply demonstrates that there is more to Inhaler than family resemblances.

While it is less commercially focused, there is no discernible drop of quality on the expanded Anthology, crammed to bursting with beautifully worked songs that add different shades and angles to her essential premise of a woman working out why her love life has left her in such emotional tatters.

By re-recording the whole of Taylor Swift's 1989, the maverick alt country star has turned a world beating chart smash album into a tender masterpiece of bruised Americana, in the process emphasising the perfect songcraft and exposing the dark heart of emotion beating beneath Swift's gleaming surfaces.

These abandoned sessions probably would have been ignored had they been released when first recorded. But to ears and sensibilities realigned to Cash’s brilliance, this really is a lost treasure.

It's an album marinated in sadness, so much so that in places it veers into the maudlin, but Harris's poetic steel usually saves the day.

When they're playing to their strengths, the 1975 provide a robust platform for Healey’s witty, romantic, confused yet always committed interrogation of the essential artifice of his role as reluctant rock star with a conscience, shouting into a void already filled with the echoes of other voices. Like many double albums, there is a fine single album here fighting to get out. If only.

There is the odd failure (23 is a saccharine ode to her husband, the footballer Gerard Piqué), but Shakira still traverses musical styles like few others.

FLO’s debut has one glaring problem: it fails to make these girls seem real. They’re excellent singers, yes, but there’s no introspection, no personality, that shines through Access All Areas.

If progress is their aim, then this is fine proof of how a softly-softly approach is often best.

There are 11 songs on When You See Yourself, filled with pretty words and lovely tunes, but I would struggle to tell you what any of them are about. Although blessed with a raw, raspy tone that could make a shopping list sound sexy, Followill’s vocals are buried in a bass-heavy mix.

Her worthier sentiments are balanced by maturing wit, self-awareness and the distinctive snap'n'slap of her funky guitar grooves.

The songs themselves may not be complex but the simple and sincere emotions expressed on anthems such as the chiming indie epic Forever, the rip-roaring AC/DC-style rocker Running Round My Brain and the Rod-Stewart-flavoured piano ballad Every Dog Has Its Day carry a potent weight of feeling and offer euphoric release.

It may be billed as a tribute to a lost star, but this Winter wonderland serves as a reminder that the blues is still very much alive and kicking.

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.