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

There's so little substance here, it's difficult to engage with the record or its creator.

Ultimately, D12 have made the fatal mistake of reducing themselves to the pitch that probably won them their deal: "think horrorcore rap, Gravediggaz-style, mixed up with middle-everything baiting lyrics even more extreme than Eminem." And that's not enough.

A drab and depressingly familiar proposition.

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.

His tenuous grasp on reality and good taste slips and he plummets into a tawdry, gratuitous and self-congratulatory flurry of misogyny, expletives and reggae.

It's more a rescinded lesson in demographics, with disc one seemingly aimed at airbrushing out the last vestiges of Knowles' credibility in favour of a procession of lame pop ballads in a Shakira or even Shania Twain-ish mould.

A very dull record.

For a moment one can hear Mraz's real soul, rather than a factory-assembled version. Sadly, it's too little and too late to save this queasy record.

In This Light And On This Evening is a weak, ill conceived and uninspiring effort.

Derulo's desperation to cover all commercial bases is only matched by an inability to stamp his own personality on them.

It's a well-made, well-polished piece of material. But she ruins it by painting a wacky overcoat over something that was probably fine in the first place.

A dismal and insipid collection of retrogressive mid-tempo ballads and textbook alt.rock moves.

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

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.

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.

A knack for woozy melodies is one weapon at Nicholls' disposal; but here they're fatally undermined both by his petulant vocal style and by the rickety, paper-thin production.

That it'll be her most scrutinised release is a problem, because its stilted, wearying, obsessive concentration on an uncomfortably forced notion of it's creator's sexuality means it's the only album she's made in the last dozen years that doesn't merit such focussed attention.

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.

Over 11 tracks she fails to pull in a single noteworthy vocal, that's if you can even locate it beneath the waves of effects designed to disguise how very little is actually there.

Meandering atmospheric intros and outros, with lyrics that often just repeat the same verse ad nauseum, overshadow what could be, at times, shorter, snappier songs.

Kasabian and their brass-necks have long since appropriated The Music's mantle of anthem-whoring psychedelic horsemen and there's barely a moment over the course of 12 tracks here where they contest that.

Greater things may well be in the pipeline for The Kooks, but this is sadly lacking in anything to fall - or indeed remain - in love with.

It's a dubious album whose chief innovation is a guest appearance by Nelly Furtado.

Airplay or not, however, he's also sounding seriously dated.

MSTRKRFT make a racket that's impressive at first but eventually the echoes of it return to bite them.

For now at least this is the sound of a band trying to do too much at once and sinking under the weight of their heroes.

With their abilities to self-censure and decide at what's fundamentally good gone seriously awry, the results are more likely to induce a rolling of eyeballs and suppressed sniggers rather than gasps of admiration.

For the most part, "In Case We Die" tries so hard to be fun it is almost no fun at all.

One meandering ballad follows another, each one overlong and labouring under the illusion that emotional profundity is more important than a decent tune.

Music that is designed to smother, to sedate, to lull the listener into a soporific state of boredom.

Awesomely anodyne, breathtakingly boring and crushingly clichéd, â??Astronautâ? singularly fails to take flight.

Before I Self Destruct needs as many bells and whistles as it can muster, because the music isn't going to cut it on its own.

There are moments where Usher's old charm and vocal velvetiness briefly resurface and remind the listener of what a bright talent he once seemed....But these highlights are rare, and Raymond vs Raymond mostly sounds as shallow and unappealing as its singer.

This collection of shimmering-smooth, synthesiser-led beats and lazy gangsta rap posturing isn't worthy of the once great Snoop.

Combined with the slick, predominantly live band set-up here it makes for some dreadfully clunky moments.

Their third, Happiness Ltd, is a sulky teenager, and about as attractive and engaging as that suggests.

Anyone looking for some spicy R'n'B to follow up Pink's fantastic breakthrough hit, 'Most Girls', will be sorely disappointed.

Frequently, it sounds like the band have spent most of that time labouring to make their fifth album as monumental as possible. Where once they swung, however ironically, now they plod. Slowly. Ponderously. In expensive lead boots.

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

"Riot City Blues" starts fairly poorly and gets progressively worse.

What pulls this album back from being anything but revelatory, however, is not only the typical lazy rock the band are purveyors of, especially 'Fire' and 'Fast Fuse,' but also the diabolical lyrical content that's employed throughout West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

A record that surgically removes all trace of sensuality and replaces it with calculated, mechanical, by-numbers bump'n'grind action.

The World Is Yours is one of the year's worst albums.

Had they imploded in some bizarre gardening accident following the release of 'Danger! High Voltage' all would be forgiven. That single still sounds classic and retains the power to get Aunt Peggy off her seat at the wedding reception..... However, the rest appears to be have been cobbled together in a matter of hours.

Musically, it's a mess.

It's a cruel world in which a Nelly sells more records than the Blastmaster KRS but what 'Nellyville' makes abundantly clear is that its creator won't be leaving a fraction of his foe's proud mark on hip-hop once the dust settles on the frantic promotion of this record.

It's hard to imagine how Hands All Over could have been any more underwhelming. In truth the only exceptional thing about it is just how average it is.