At best, it’s dreamily creative; at worst, overwrought.

At 17 tracks, the album feels long, but at its best, Free Spirit finds Khalid soaring closer to becoming pop’s next big star.

Only the closing and sole rap track, the brief but vehement Flyin', gives any indication of Arthur's personality.

There's an innate problem in the way Swings Both Ways swings--like a pendulum, flipping and flopping between 2013 and 1953, a problem that the orchestra can't resolve.

Embrace's populist sensibilities remain intact: stadium-friendly choruses rise up and grab you by the throat at every opportunity.

It’s a shame that the album overstays its welcome a little. As always, the Casady sisters are best in small, surreal doses.

Where Expectations saw Kiyoko taking space to explore her own voice, Panorama feels like a leap backwards, trading personality for affectless tracks that fade into the background.

Overlong, and sounding a little like a lot of other things, High Anxiety nonetheless reveals an unexpected talent hidden in plain sight.

Taken as part of Sia’s own unfolding character arc, songs like Courage to Change have their moments, but it’s hard to dispel the discomfort surrounding the entire project.

Harris's production has become increasingly homogenised and, despite the array of vocalists, everything here risks sounding the same.

A cynic would call this hotchpotch of genres and guests a laser-guided exercise in streaming monopoly, a credibility-by-osmosis playlist primed for summer dominance. And that person would be 100% correct.

Unsurprisingly, No Pier Pressure works best when, as on What Ever Happened and Tell Me Why, the Beach Boy fastens winsome 60s harmonies to damp-eyed reflections on the passing of time.

There are welcome changes of pace – the rib-rattling Forever featuring Post Malone a highlight – but the tempo drops again for a suite of acoustic sketches that touch on God (the title track), patience (Confirmation) and, on ETA, the joys of online surveillance (“Drop me a pin so I can know your location”). It’s a subdued end to an album that feels like a purely selfish endeavour on Bieber’s part.

It's hardly a treasure trove of unreleased material but the tape hiss, traffic noise and acoustic arrangements make it an invitingly slackerish alternative.

Still sounds weird and abrasive in the best possible way.

Bar a few tracks on their debut album--most notably Rootless and the glorious We Come Running, which makes fine use of a children's choir--they are neither as outre as the Polyphonic Spree nor as imaginative as the Flaming Lips.

These prom queen themes have had a more intriguing musical treatment from Lana del Rey.

Now 64, Ely still sings with agility and swagger, though retrospection and mortality tie together the songs here.

It's by no means a bad record, although the ballads are best avoided.

As with his last few records, Young’s horror at the destruction of the environment remains high in the mix, with a grab-bag of other themes (ageing, self-belief, the iniquities of tech) and a silvery hope that “something new is growing”, as he puts it on the freewheeling title track.

The first three songs are superb, especially the blissfully silly acrostic Magic (“G for the girl that got me good/ I C the world the way I should”), but it’s a glossily one-note album, an uncomplicated toast to desire sated, friendship reciprocated and love requited.

Success seems to have dulled his considerable rapping talent.

Azalea's flow is both playful and authoritative, and above-par surprises unfurl on the productions.

Largely, though, Nesbitt's teenage insights are buried in functional, anodyne pop music.

As these 12 tracks go by, the quirks that made Jessie J’s previous albums notable have been replaced by the hugeness of failsafe producers; and she has taken a step back from the songwriting.

There’s nothing that really connects here; no flash of originality to distinguish them from any number of stadium emoters riffing on fantasies of the open road.

The best tracks come from producers Floss & Flame and Soundtrakk, but the album sinks under a surfeit of muddled, undercooked hip-pop. Lupe’s ability seems sadly exhausted by his ambition.

The album's midpoint rave banger, Let There Be Love, is about as formulaic as club pop gets. But it resonates effectively, like much else here; every throb and ooh in the right place.