They have done Ray Charles proud.

14 songs over an hour's running time is a lot of nonsense to digest. For the Chili Peppers, songwriting is a medium without a message, unless it's just to let your inhibitions go and dance.

There are still a little too many US FM radio pop-metal vocals, but happily there's also plenty of fierce, melody-laced drum & bass action that will please festivals and dancefloors the world over.

Though the materials accompanying Nobody is Listening insist that it’s Zayn’s most personal record to date, and the one over which he’s had the most personal control, it’s hard to find much trace of him here.

The glossy results lack any particular character. Peppered with hooks and catchy melodies, everything sounds like something you might have heard somewhere before, which in the case of Ed Sheeran soundalike single No Judgement you almost certainly have.

They’ve tried to update the quintessentially Eighties sound of the original to make it fit for a modern audience. The result is often a strange hybrid, which is enjoyable only as long as one doesn’t expect to hear too much Miles Davis.

Most of the songs here do somewhat merge into one, long, party soundtrack that is enjoyable to listen to and yet entirely forgettable.

While the tricksy chord changes upon which most tracks are founded may be clever, or possibly ground-breaking, these recordings seriously lack oomph.

Cee Lo openly parades his retro tastes, but his outrageous personality invests them with a contemporary edge.

Amidst skyscraping Queen harmonies and portentous Pink Floyd melodrama there are sensitive touches, with some elegant, slow-unfurling lead guitar reminiscent of Dire Straits.

It sounds like a romantic gift to his new wife and a sentimental salute to his own childhood--a minor gem from a major talent.

Division is by far Sheeran’s smoothest collection.

It may not be his most cohesive collection but when it comes to concocting sad bangers artfully combining bittersweet emotion with mesmeric dance grooves, Moby is too good to dismiss.

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.

The 13 songs, written between 1972 and 2001, show off the range and subtlety of Lowe's songwriting.

For Kings of Leon to remain interesting and relevant, they need to stop trying to be the band the music business seems to want them to be and start following Caleb Followill’s muse wherever it leads.

Throughout, the arrangements are as relentlessly upbeat and playfully retro as the album’s Alan Fears-designed artwork, stuffed with vocoders, peacocking basslines and laser-beam synth sounds. They’re also wildly referential, and largely fail to add anything either fresh or memorable to the conversation.

Sheeran sounds like a supercharged David Gray. Grown-up. Energised. Forget Autumn, this feels like an album of bright new dawns.

The results sound as if Lynch's old protégé Chris Isaak had taken a left turn into lyrical eccentricity, pulsing synths and sinister atmospherics.

Inevitably, 51 minutes of melodrama becomes draining. But it captures Del Rey's mystique perfectly.

It's wholly derivative, yet the tuneful, instantly gratifying choruses often trump one's desire to play spot the influence.

It contains Frankie Knuckles-era house music, hip-hop breaks and some interesting electronica. However, the band are not the genre-defying pioneers they think they are.

A guest spot for Little Dragon's Yukimi Nagano adds spice to this unexpected feast.

Although it's a bright and buoyant effort--with recognisable touches of ska and reggae--her new album lacks the left-field flourishes that make her special.

The problem with Justice is that Bieber thinks his music is more powerful than it actually is.

Set against jarring synths, the macho, sexualised lyrics sound seedy--or worse, menacing--and what prosaic hooks exist are obscured by the dirge.

Agnetha: still as seductively normal, beautifully boring and enigmatically familiar as ever.

The result is not bad: though you miss the unpredictable blasts of raw hellfire from the cult classic Surfer Rosa era, the band find some gritty, grindy melodies in the bigger, slicker vein of 1991’s patchy Trompe Le Monde.