This is a 12-track cringefest on which Stewart celebrates carnal love in between songs about his late father.

The poorest served is hapless Ellie Goulding, struggling against the hurtling momentum of "I Need Your Love"; more successful is Florence Welch on "Sweet Nothing".

Though his fare is bland, it is sincere and hygienically prepared. No thrills, but all affable, affordable, family-friendly fills.

On the gorgeous Jardine/Wilson weeper “Tell Me Why”, the doleful nostalgia is surprisingly clear-eyed.... Sadly, “that thing” goes missing on Kacey Musgraves’ kite-weight offering and electro throwaway “Runaway Dancer”, fronted by Capital Cities’ Sebu Simonian, with synths via McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime”.

This isn’t so much an album that would rile you to the point of turning it off. Rather, it washes over you, with its mostly average beats (“Forever” is a rare exception) and seemingly random cluster of guest features.

The arrangements are suitably bombastic: there’s a theremin camping up the pub piano on his cover of Laura Nyro’s ”Wedding Bell Blues”. His version of Bruce Wayne Campbell’s (aka Jobriath) 1973 glam stomp “Morning Starship” really sells the wry/cosmic lyrics about a girl picking a rocket’s lock with her hairpin. ... Morrissey’s take on Joni Mitchell’s “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow” is leaden jazz karaoke, stripping the original of all its haze and drift. The electro-stomp/harp, fading to reflective piano fade-out of his reworking of Melanie Safka’s ”Some Say I Got Devil”, makes a joke of his lifelong self-pity.

Coup De Grace is Kane’s best work to date: punchy, cohesive and lots of fun.

The standard dips slightly in the later stages, but the grooves throughout are sleek and snappy, and CeeLo himself has rarely sounded better.

Dan Croll’s follow-up to Sweet Disarray suffers from a kind of creeping anonymity: immediately after hearing it, it’s virtually impossible to recollect the salient features of any track.

Now it's here, and it's a bit of a letdown.

Over brutish electro-stomps and fizzy pop trifles every bit as sickly as that suggests, Marina's shrill Violet Elizabeth Bott inflections proclaim her emptiness.

With Peace Trail, Neil Young slips into self-parody again, with a set of desultory peacenik songs too simplistic and patronising to be taken seriously.

It’s wearily repetitive and almost aggressively underwhelming.

Though neither particularly new nor classic, Iggy Azalea’s debut album proper (following two self-released mixtapes) reveals enough smarts and skills to sustain the Aussie rapper’s momentum.

Her Scots brogue addresses the issue of “who you’ll be one day” with husky urgency, yoked to jaunty jangle-rock and prancing piano-pop which doesn’t anchor her in too parochial a terrain, giving Peroxide a broad appeal potentially akin to Ellie Goulding.

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning is a cohesive enough follow-up, but Bugg still seems conflicted about the sound that first propelled him into the spotlight. ... It rankles when this album was put together by a team best known for the music he claims to despise.

Music of The Spheres isn't Coldplay at their Viva la Vida finest, even if their undeniably upbeat attitude remains hard to resist. The Pythagoreans believed that music purified the soul. This album offers a more superficial spiritual shower. A fleeting invigoration.

The riffs throughout this album are catchy enough to keep the beanie heads nodding along. But producer Travis Barker (Blink 182) repeatedly fills out the sound to the extent that the exposing angularity required to express true anxiety is lost.

With his fifth studio album, Timberlake isn’t re-inventing the wheel, but he solidly continues to experiment with R&B, funk, pop and soul, with Americana creating an interesting layer.

Lavigne might not have found a musical identity that truly becomes her, but Head Above Water is an effective, and occasionally affecting, album.

Ultimately, however, despite the fizzing electronic undercarriage applied to most tracks on Electronic Earth, Labrinth's real forte may turn out to be the more traditional, earthbound musical skills.

Kylie’s Christmas is wearyingly hard going at times.

They may talk it up as a brave new step forward, but their first album in over eight years can't really be viewed as other than a retrograde move for Jane's Addiction.

Walker drizzles bluesy, Hozier-like soul bombast and nebulous folk tunes with Bond strings and EDM sizzles; tracks so thin and flavourless they go down without chewing.

The Editors here step backwards into the crepuscular netherworld of Eighties new wave from whence they took their original inspiration.

Barlow’s generally at his best in more mainstream territory; he’s essentially a classic pop singer-songwriter in the stalwart British style of McCartney and Elton John.

A fond indulgence, perhaps, but there’s nothing on Déjà Vu that will take your breath away like “I Feel Love.”

"Whistle", takes a sidestep with its acoustic guitar and tedious single-entendre hook, but there are plenty more brutal stompers to spare on Wild Ones.

Maroon 5's sudden decline with the Mutt Lange-produced Hands All Over seems unlikely to be significantly overturned by the lacklustre Overexposed.

The new instrumentation affords a more nuanced approach, from the thrumming bass, piano, tom-toms and subtly tingling guitar evoking the resolute support of “Broad-Shouldered Beasts”, and the keening, spacious synth textures of “Tompkins Square Park”, to the unison guitar thrash that opens “The Wolf.”

Green's delivery is too Estuary-Eminem, scattershot hip-hop asperity snarled out with a mockney menace that is too secondhand to be effective.

They've certainly lost much of their vocal character to the dreaded auto-tune, without gaining much by recompense.

The result is a series of half-formed, indifferently performed tracks on which even gifted guitarist Hugh Harris struggles to locate the inspired touches that made Konk so impressive.

It's all sounding terribly tired now.

It’s no surprise, but still no less disappointing, that with all of West’s last-minute meddling of the album’s mixes the record lacks cohesion. Jesus is King feels more like a collection of well-produced skits than a full studio album, and fans will no doubt be wondering whether all the hype and stress that preceded its unveiling was worth it.

Her dance-pop here is identical to everyone else’s, which leaves Perry clutching at the single-entendre raciness of “Bon Appetit” (“Got me spread like a buffet / Bon appetit, boy”) and curdled imagery like “my love’s the bullet with your name on it” to secure a soupcon of bogus outrage.

This debut offering as Snoop Lion has much to recommend it, not least the infectious grooves devised by Diplo's Major Lazer production team.

It’s stuffed with generic accounts of relationships, life on the road, times with the band.

State sees Todd Rundgren deliver his customary laconic commentaries on a world gone mad from behind a wall of rock, techno and dubstep riffs.

An overstuffed pillow of an EP that seeks to calm all of the world's aches but just ends up sounding schmaltzy and smothering.

Resplendent moments – like a second’s burst of sunshine through dark storm clouds – are so rare that by the time you emerge on the other side, they’re all but forgotten. ... But by involving Manson, West has made this impossible. Donda leaves a sour taste that no number of good beats, gospel choirs or church organs will cleanse. Zero stars.

On tracks such as “Daylight” and “Fear of Heights”, he strains to fit over the futuristic “rage” sound popularised by Playboi Carti. For better or worse, the album is at its best when Drake’s not there.

The problem is, the album – so full of drawling balladry and anodyne lyrics – is deeply unremarkable. Listening to it is like wading through a quagmire of banality.

The fascination with sonic texture over tune tends to make everything sound like everything else, as if the tracks were leaking into one another.

It’s a record of heartbreak cauterised by hope, so alongside the routine tears and recrimination is a recurrent element of recovery and optimism that sets it apart from most other soul-diva offerings.

The songs are mostly just nondescript airwave fodder, clogging up the aether for months to come.

These 10 tracks are a masterclass in modern pop creation, pinballing from style to style without endangering their essential "TingTingness".

The sad fact about supergroups is that they are rarely the result of any musical imperative. This is painfully confirmed on the debut offering from the alliance of Mick Jagger, Dave Stewart, Joss Stone, Damian Marley and A R Rahman, on which the assembled talents cast around for a style of their own without ever unearthing the natural chemistry on which great bands rely.

Latest Record Project Volume 1 might be a grievance-heavy sprawl, but if you’re a Morrison die-hard it’ll be a worthy, timely addition to his catalogue.

Williams veers all too often from the kind of whimsy and cheese that’s acceptable at Christmastime, to a level of saccharine that actually makes your teeth hurt.

F.A.M.E. is equal parts bubblebath boudoir soul and more bullish beat-driven floor-fillers, tricked out with familiar guests like Timbaland and Justin Bieber, the most lively of which is Busta Rhymes's babble-rap over the Clangers-style bleeps of "Look at Me Now".

The record’s sprawling R&B slow jams are more likely to inspire snoozing than shagging. Weighing in at a bloated 18 tracks, it’s got the soggy dead weight and wonky springs of a fly-tipped mattress.

The fairly routine nature of the backing tracks means that The Fifth lacks some of the distinctive berserker spirit that characterised its predecessors.

the only real flashes of character come from the reworked riffs of Old Neneh Cherry and Ann Peebles hits used on a couple of tracks.

She harmonises piquantly with herself over the languid guitar groove, and B.o.B's rap is pleasingly modest enough, too. The same can't really be said of such tracks as "Casualty Of Love" and "Rainbow", however, both singularly unimpressive songs tricked out with the showy vocal bling favoured by R&B divas as a substitute for genuine soul.

Richard Ashcroft’s first album in six years is a dismal affair.

“Believe”, finds Eminem’s faith in his talent creeping back in. The ticking beat and sinister, John Carpenter-esque piano figure are harbingers of resurgent menace, while the hazy, treated chorus hook sounds like medication flooding his spirit with the confidence that carries the rest of the album. There are plenty of typical Eminem tropes scattered throughout Revival: he picks constantly at the scabs of marital failure. ... But ultimately, it’s all about Eminem himself.

It's a cartoon of emotion: even when whispering, there's a stage intimacy about her delivery; and at full blast, she has the emotive subtlety of a foghorn, though that may be to surmount the barrage of thundering tom-toms and pounding pianos with which she's been saddled.

#willpower is stuffed with sounds that, while in no sense as cutting-edge as he likes to make out, crest the wave of the popular.

One hardly looks to Mary J Blige for restraint, but here the combination with David Foster’s orchestrations adds an extra layer of icing to an already sickly cake

Originally recorded on a home four-track machine, the songs were subsequently re-done with Trevor Horn at the helm, which has applied a little polish to what still sound like under-written sketches rather than compelling pop material.

It gets a bit noodly-doodly at times, but with some stand-out moments, notably the lovely, meditative grace of the bass and guitar alliance in "XII."

there's ultimately nothing distinctive here to grab the imagination. The singer has obviously modelled his every inflection on Bono, and the guitarist likewise over-employs Edge-style arpeggiated riffs; but they lack U2's broader ambition and sense of purpose.

It’s mildly funny and philosophically intriguing. Little else is in this team-up of exhausted pop forces.

Rothrock does a decent job of pumping life into Blunt's material, building a song such as "Bonfire Heart" from fingerstyle guitar opening to big, exultant conclusion by way of subtle accretions. Not that he has much to play with.

Many of these songs are hip hop-lite, incorporating bland trap beats as Levine delivers lyrics in the kind of stutter pioneered by early Soundcloud rappers.

Evolve involves mostly devolving back into the hoariest of tired rock cliches (including what sounds like roto-toms), and plodding grimly towards the summer’s festivals.

Three of the record’s 11 – eleven – incongruous covers, seemingly selected by lobbing darts at a Spotify genre cloud, involve Beck showcasing his sub-Dave Gilmour, cruise ship guitar work by playing the vocal lines on instrumental takes of Davy Spillane’s “Midnight Walker” and a couple of Beach Boys tunes. When Depp gets involved things often, somehow, get worse.

Behind the whippy synth flourishes and propulsive stompbeats that snag one's interest, the lazy charmlessness of the duo's rhyming quickly grows tiresome, a situation unalleviated by the occasional appearance of a Busta Rhymes or Calvin Harris. Fun in extremely small doses.

Kodaline offer a musical barometer of bankable current rock trends, but display scant originality on this debut album.

It's not hard to see why both parties agreed to the alliance--Metallica gain artistic cachet, Reed gains an audience--but it is not an alliance that welcomes listeners with open arms.

It might have been hoped that the album itself were more impressive.

Meat Loaf's latest, which covers much the same territory [as The Wall] but without any depth or desire to understand.

SKINS is another fiery blast of catharsis, a largely metaphor-free space where depression isn't hinted at poetically but invited to throw down. ... There are no songs as refined or showing such potential as ?'s “infinity (888)” and “Moonlight”, and many of them feel like half ideas.

It’s all fine: shiny and efficient pop, smelling of body oil and new car upholstery. But Payne treats each track like a rental car. He gives each song a spin and hands the keys back like a good lad without leaving a trace.

Unleash The Love is steeped in this kind of smugness, aptly embodied in the rolled-up-jacket-sleeves ersatz ‘80s funk-pop of tracks like “I Don’t Wanna Know”. The “bonus” album of reheated Beach Boys hits, meanwhile, simply stains one’s precious memories.

Most songs here sound like capitulations to overworked clichés.

DUMMY BOY is an insufferable 13-track farrago of anything from rock riffs to calypso drums, all pinned by 6ix9ine’s obsessive use of the “n” word, along with every other negative trope found in the gangsta rap of the early Noughties. ... Avoid.

When she sticks to the disco-pop staples of celebrating youth and dancing and fun, in tracks like "Young", "Live It Up" and "Live Your Life", once the energy dissipates, so do the songs, evaporating as if they never existed.

Strident guitars and harmonies tug one's sleeve, eager for attention they don't merit, while the lyrics seem to be about nothing.

The narrow range of Nevins's voice limits its character somewhat, but is still compelling when combined with her mountain fiddle on a song such as "Wood and Stone", whose crisp swamp-funk country backbeat brings pep to its message of tradition and heritage.

On her third album, the self-titled Kelsea, she finds a balance between the two. There’s more than a hint of early Taylor Swift on perky opener “Overshare”, while “Club” is as uplifting a “not going out” song as you could hope for.