The good news is that, from its amusingly headlong title down, Different Gear, Still Speeding feels a good deal less lumpy than the last few Oasis albums.

Andy Cutting (accordion), Jon Boden (Hields's partner and the Bellowhead frontman is on fiddle, guitar and double bass), Sam Sweeney (fiddle, viola, cello), Rob Harbron (English Concertina and fiddle) and Martin Simpson (guitar, banjo) provide the classy framework for Hield to interpret 11 traditional songs.

This is an album full of wistful, careworn emotions and a sense of quiet profundity.

There are songs about baseball, weather and enduring domestic love, acutely observed and delivered in tones so smooth they slip past in a soft blur.

Nine originals interspersed with the overfamiliar classics indicate a songwriter’s fascination with rock form, but only I Want You Back (sung with Steven Tyler) justifies its position nestled between so many inarguable classics.

It is quirkily appealing without quite being convincing. Lacking an emotional centre, it’s not really deep and dark enough to posit Ellis-Bextor as a sensitive singer-songwriter.

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.

When it comes to lyrical audacity and dramatic delivery, rap’s most maniacal motormouth still wipes the floor with all-comers, albeit this time he might pause to wipe the microphone first.

She attacks old soul numbers with gusto, turning them into cheery Stones-ish romps, but is at her best on pared-back material heavy with world-weary pathos.

His voice has that ability to spring from soulful growl to angelic falsetto that always gets TV talent show chairs spinning.

At times it does sound like it is trying a bit too hard to please. But it's more pop than Pop ever was, and it certainly does the job it apparently sets out to do, delivering addictive pop rock with hooks, energy, substance and ideas that linger in the mind after you’ve heard them.

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

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.

Theirs is a music of doomed melancholy –- plaintive, dark, and uneasy.

Madonna's infinite varieties have certainly staled.

There are nice nuggets aplenty here. .... But, my goodness, some songs leave a bad taste

Eminen’s 11th album offers over an hour of the world’s greatest rapper blasting away on all cylinders. It is the first great album of 2020, so lethally brilliant it should be a crime.

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.

If you take this album in the spirit of throwaway fun in which it seems to have been concocted, it is harmlessly engaging, although all of these tracks have been delivered more persuasively before.

There are motivational numbers such as Get Things Done, with its great elastic-bass hook. But more often Hesketh is in the trenches.

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

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.

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.

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.

Her smarter, odder lines (“Put your hand on my piano”) stand out amid the clubbing clichés, though her high, slightly strangled, often shouted vocals don’t.

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

If this record feels like a triumph of style over substance, I still like its style.

Bieber’s offering is less of a mainstream crowd pleaser and all the more interesting for it, a quirky, atmospheric electro R’n’B concoction with sci-fi sounds and offbeat vocal samples that focus attention on the star’s soft, supple and seductive singing.