There's none of the ABBA or Cardigans influence she claimed, nor any of the fun she seems to have in real life. For now she just sounds like another of pop's Stepford Wives.

Good or bad, everything here sounds like a lesser version of someone else.

'Invincible' is an album almost unbearably mired in schmaltz.

His 12th album is so girly it should be wearing pink tights and a tiara.

Who You Are doesn't entirely deliver, but even when its songs fall short of the promised hype, their potential is obvious.

It's, well, a thoroughly professional record. And therein lies the problem. Method Man, perhaps more than any other Wu-Tang member bar ODB, has personality to burn, and trying to force it into a box fit for any other hit rapper is an impossible task.

Given the fact there are 25 tracks and a platoon of songwriters spread over Doll Domination's various bonus discs, it's not surprising that it occasionally succeeds, and there are hit singles to be found here.

He still fires the occasional lyrical blank and his guitar playing has less of the sparks of the past, instead settling into a role complementing the songs rather than dominating them.

There's precious little of the extravagant muso twiddling and indulgent nonsense that has waylaid the band sometimes in the past.

Musically, it's a mess.

If you can manage to put such quibbles aside--and it will be a struggle--Light After Dark has some redeeming features.

Resurrect[s] the 1970s white ska world of The Specials, The Jam et al with varying degrees of success.

If they've kept the good stuff back in the hope of better times, the decision was misguided; but if this is the best they can manage, the portents are, in the original sense of the word, ill.

It is one thing to not take yourself to seriously but it is quite another to go to the other extreme. For all his knowing winks, Green walks the fine line between decadency and distaste.

All fine in principle, except we've heard it all a million times before.

There's nothing raunchy or attitudinal here, just blustering dance-pop numbers and mushy ballads that owe a debt to Lady Gaga, minus all the flesh, spunk and bonkers stilettos.

So safe and sanitised it makes The Fugees sound like NWA.

The self-produced Beyond The Neighbourhood balances its meat and veg indie with enough electronic textures and hip hop beats to (sort of) catch the ear.

A very dull record.

Unfortunately "Tourist" is derivative in only a one-dimensional sense: its imagination stopping where Wayne Coyne’s begins.

An average album over produced, Love? has Lopez throwing everything she's got at relaunching her pop career and coming up shorter than anyone could ever have thought possible.

Wham, bam, rock and glam, it's Marshall stacks turned up to 11 and Kelly riffing away in the steps of a heap of bands who do it better.

The problem lies in the fact that The Stooges have nothing left to say.

What's that sound? That's the sound of a barrel scraping and a career being flushed down a toilet.

Drum and Bass dons Noisia have been roped in on production duties and they've put a fair deal of weight into tracks that might otherwise have sounded flat.

Really, this isn't really a Run DMC album, they're just guests on it.

If this fluffy, punk-lite petulance, devoid of any real personality is to your taste, lap it up.