Quadrophenia is one of the few albums of its time that sounds as good today as it must have done then. For once, the term 'masterpiece' is not sold on the cheap.

Seventy-four years on, he has recorded what is surely the blues album of the year.

Listening to it today, marvelling at his seemingly effortless way with a tune, it's understandable why it remains a classic of its era.

Fourteen years later, this reissue reveals a record so unique and ahead-of-its-time that nothing else has sounded like it since.

You'll wish you'd been there. You'll wish it would never end.

Should you be keen to pick your way through the evolutionary process of one of rock's greatest ever long-players, hearing every fuzzy demo and work-in-progress chorus, now you've the chance like never before.

A fans-pleasing eighth album from Britain's most consistently brilliant band.

In any form, What's Going On is an album that everyone should have in their collection; no matter how many times you play it, there is always something else to discover.

They are, right now, the most inspirational, intriguing, effortlessly enrapturing band at work on these shores. And Smother might well prove to be the album of 2011.

Only behind such a distracting smokescreen could Damon Albarn get away with conducting a project as sprawling, daring, innovative, surprising, muddled and magnificent as Plastic Beach: not just one of the best records of 2010, but a release to stand alongside the greatest Albarn’s ever been involved with and a new benchmark for collaborative music as a whole.

It sounds amazing, and represents an astounding return.

The set is a masterclass in how to respectfully update and enhance classic music, and proves how vital and relevant 30-year-old music remains today.

With its harder edge, its hindsight-laden sense of imminent loss and its sheer dirtiness, L.A. Woman comprises a brilliant bridge between the floral madness of the 1960s and the tougher decade to come.

It's come late, but Basic Instinct is one of the best RnB albums of the year.

Another classic of the genre is born.

Wrecking Ball is a work of commanding range and masterful execution.

It's not merely a rehash of the original, but a cohesive, considered masterpiece in its own right.

21 is simply stunning. After only a handful of plays, it feels like you've always known it.

Even on a cursory listen, a water-testing foray into its 16 tracks, it's immediately apparent that this is an album unlike either that came before it.

The result is a remarkable display of creative unity and a stellar masterpiece sitting alongside the group's best work.

Almost 15 years on it remains a stereo regular, and loved like the day it was delivered, awkwardly and self-consciously, into a world that didn't know what to do with it. And, largely, still doesn't. So give it a home, won't you; it could be your album of the year.

Innovative, dark, bold and creative, it’s an album only David Bowie could make.

The Promise is as compelling an advert for the Boss's beautiful, blue-collar soul as you're likely to find outside of the hits; an indispensible portrait of an artist at the top of his game. File this one under American Greats.

There's no fault to be found with Skying--truly, every song here hits its mark, and while The Horrors are evidently a band happy to change its spots from record to record (and steal a few licks, too), only the most ungracious of observers could deny that they've now crafted two of the finest British albums of recent years.

Monkeytown is the sound of two men working in harmony, perfectly in control of their machines. And it may just be one of the albums of the year.

Purity Ring have pulled off the feat of producing one of the year's most arresting debuts – a Grimm Tales for the 2010s, shrouded in the illusory threads of contemporary club music – while sounding like no-one else but themselves.

Until the Quiet Comes further catapults Ellison into the cosmos and away from all things terrestrial. He's the king of his domain, and there is no runner-up.

Please enjoy someone actually putting a bit of effort and imagination back into pop, and keep the sneering and lazy comparisons in check. Not that they can take anything away from what is, simply, a marvellous record.