The production doesn't always give Nicks's gothic imagery enough waft, but fans will love puzzling over which of her paramours she's recalling on Secret Love.

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

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.

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.

Pound for pound and hook for hook, Duck is as strong an album as they have ever made: a bright, giddy, colourful collection of pop anthems to raise the spirits.

Forever is exactly the kind of record you’d expect from Jon Bon Jovi at this stage of his career: reflective, lightweight, a bit tinnier than those glam-metal hits. It’s an album that will remind some why they can’t stand Bon Jovi, and others why they love the band.

It doesn’t let up for a moment: all 10 songs open with clever soundbite hooks as they push hard into verses that sound like choruses, bridges that sounds like anthems, and choruses that sound like Chris Martin, Ed Sheeran and Elton John got together to write the ultimate Eurovision jingle.

If Art Official Age is a juicy reaffirmation of Prince pop basics, Plectrumelectrum, his collaborative album with 3rdEyeGirl, represents a more intriguing departure, even if it too reaches back into the past, making a bold connection with a time when Jimi Hendrix was the last great black American rock star, before funk really left rock 'n' roll to the white man.

There are big, generalised emotions: hurt, love, loss, transcendence. But none of the tiny, idiosyncratic observations that make and break relationships.

It's a mixed bag.

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.

Pitched somewhere between his two most famous albums, Play and 18, it's hardly groundbreaking but is enjoyable none the less.

They're still chronicling gangster life, albeit a former one, but the beats are now funkier, offering a surprisingly accessible counterpoint to the cinematic, bloodthirsty narratives of star rapper Ghostface Killah. His caustic delivery propels the best tracks here.

Too much of the record sounds like generic, Katy Perry-esque power-pop.

Lopez’s voice is technically fine but has a thinness that doesn’t really suit the exposure of digitally clinical modern production settings. She jettisons all Latin flavouring, which might have been her superpower.

For now Birdy remains a novelty. Her rich, malleable vocals suggest, however, that she won't be caged for long.

The foray ultimately fails because Laurie's voice is no more than adequate.

She doesn’t do anything wildly original with them [musical genres], but she has fun.

His overdue follow up is absolutely stuffed to the rafters with another round of big, weepie ballads about how miserable his love life is.

Folky stand-outs like Monochrome cast a warm glow, and Carry On concludes with the expertly poignant wordplay and emotive refrain which will surely have Anglo-American audiences weeping. Five albums in, the Mumfords will, indeed, carry on.

She sounds like a woman, and an artist, who’s finally found herself.

An over eagerness to keep up to date has resulted in making Twain sound less mature than her successor. On Queen of Me, Twain comes across as Swift’s over eager auntie, charging onto the dancefloor, determined to prove she still has the moves to cut it with the kids.

The Kooks have come out fighting though, completely re-evaluating and overhauling their sound and the result is an exuberant fourth album bristling with character.

Their once-ebullient anthems have been replaced by a collection of mid-tempo, uninspiringly ponderous tracks.

For the Wu-Tang purists, twitchy for a return to the raw Only Built 4 Cuban Linx sonics, the music here isn’t exactly going to quench your thirst. But it’s further proof that what the RZA truly savours is stepping outside of his comfort zone, and it's a relief to once again hear a little weirdness in rap.

It’s a long way from the rocker's angry persona, but he’s always had a soppy side. Sometimes the lyrics are also sloppy.

An unadventurous set list reworks some of his most thoughtful and sombre songs with a selection of classic covers, all given a lush production gloss by the late Phil Ramone. What lifts it to a higher plane is Michael’s smooth and expressive singing.

Sheezus should confirm Allen’s status as a national treasure, reason enough to be cheerful.