Beyoncé mostly eschews polished vocal performances in favour of expression, with the intricate vocal runs that wrap up Plastic Off The Sofa a notable exception, and while the explosive final verse of Heated is being edited at time of writing its raw and spontaneous quality is intensely satisfying.

Bailey Rae sounds like an artist reborn. It may not be what you expect, but it’s all the better for that. Without a doubt, it is the best album of Bailey Rae’s career, and quite probably one of the albums of 2023 as well.

Sex, Death & The Infinite Void resembles The Rocky Horror Picture Show if you were to watch it on a rollercoaster in the dark: it’s thrilling, coquettishly idiosyncratic, and filled to the brim with palpable pride at their lack of creative limits. If it’s one thing no critic could ever say Creeper lacks, it’s ambition, and here it really pays off.

As this wildly talented, unpredictable and near flawless young singer and musician bids her farewell with the album's longest track, BaBopBye Ya, this time in cocktail club torch singer style, one can but marvel at the impressive range, ambition (realised) and detail of this deeply polished, professional yet utterly, brilliantly bonkers album.

Blue Weekend is Wolf Alice’s best work yet – a confident, euphoric, blistering 40 minutes that’s guaranteed to be on many people’s ‘best of’ lists at the end of the year.

Guts is an immensely confident and assured record which confirms that Olivia Rodrigo is here for the long-term.

If SZA needed to prove that she’s still at the top of R&B, she has succeeded with emotional heft, piercingly astute lyrics and a versatile delivery: with more than a few similarities to Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, SOS is perhaps the best break-up record since TDE’s last one.

He has bravely laid his songwriting gifts bare in their purest form.

Somehow, from nothing, they’ve pulled off a surprising but oh so welcome return, and this record plays like a triumphant middle finger salute, coolly showing everyone how its done... and writing the first line on a thousand ‘album of the year’ lists before January’s even out.

Punisher is funny but serious, subtle yet obtuse, familiar and somehow simultaneously entirely unique. Even if in the final analysis it’s still not massively folky.

Like all the best albums, it keeps you on edge, never quite knowing what’s coming next.

Black Dog might not be a comfortable listen but its unrelenting power and undisguised starkness demands attention and makes it impossible to ignore.

Just like a balloon the music soars to ever greater heights, until finally the listener stands transfixed, observing until they can see no more.

It’s a debut album full of confidence, heart and ambition, with songs that sound both instantly familiar and also like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

It’s rare to hear a debut album so confident and accomplished, especially when the artist himself has just turned 20 years old. Yet Psychodrama is pretty close to a masterpiece and raises the bar for a new standard in British rap.

Untrue is complex, stark, tender, blurred and breathtaking. Burial has managed the impossible and improved on his faultless debut.

It’s just as special as you’d expect.

With a couple of judicious tweaks to the song choices, this retrospective could have been truly great rather than simply very, very good.

Spaces demonstrates a prodigious, world-class talent that shines through regardless of format or circumstance.

It’s an album that manages to remain accessible while still sounding challenging and unconventional, an album that can sound heart-stoppingly beautiful one minute and scratchily acerbic the next and, ultimately, an album that’s impossible to grow bored of.

Run The Jewels 2 is one of the best albums of the year.

It’s about clean lines, geometric beauty and clear sincerity. But it also has depth, richness and luxurious colour. It can be taken as superficially perfect pop music, or you can listen a little deeper and hear just how intricately woven her heartbreak anthems really are. She is an artist in the truest sense. And Honey is her latest masterpiece.

[Love & Hate] was a magnificent album, and the formula is continued with the same collaborators to stunning effect on KIWANUKA.

It’s an album that confirms the sound of an artist continuing to push forward, a unified expression of joy that is never anything but bold, playful and fun.

Killer Mike and El-P have been speaking out about the deep rot at the core of the USA for their whole careers, and with this album they add several more tunes to a rich canon of protest music that will galvanise an oppositional movement.

This is an astonishing debut album, one to immerse yourself in and live with for weeks, if not months – an intoxicating statement which announces one of Britain’s most exciting new bands.

Olsen, her arrangers and producer (The Paper Chase‘s John Congleton) have created an album that simply bulges with perfection and timeless songs.

This is thrillingly visceral music that could bring Mannequin Pussy ever closer to crossover success.