Rap has been around for four decades now, and you might have hoped it would have evolved beyond this kind of backwards, deeply misogynist, abusively macho, greed- and status-obsessed posturing.

You don’t come to Katy Perry for depth. What’s made her special in the past is that lightning jolt of emotion that rushes through the layers of sugary-sweet pop; that’s what made lusty adolescent hormones surge as you listen to Teenage Dream, what made donning a leopard print two-piece seem like an empowering move on Roar. It’s there on Smile but you have to work for it.

A string section and gospel choir barely add nuance to straight-ahead karaoke versions of Oasis classics and a few of Liam’s solo songs.

An atmospheric ode to the anxieties and rewards of new fatherhood on his debut solo album.

Garratt still has a tendency to overelaboration, compressing armchair techno, James Blake-like digital manipulations and McCartney-esque flair into lush, shapeshifting tracks replete with pushy synths and layers of harmonies, where every sonic space is stuffed with activity. The effect is quite prog rock, reminiscent of such busy 1980’s synth songwriters as Nick Kershaw and Thomas Dolby.

As it shifts from the McCartneyesque soft rock of Sweetheart Mercury to the psychedelic mantra of The Warhol Me and very Sparks-like piano chamber pop of Comme D’Habitude, everything tends to sound a bit like something you might have heard before being lovingly recontextualized.

When they're playing to their strengths, the 1975 provide a robust platform for Healey’s witty, romantic, confused yet always committed interrogation of the essential artifice of his role as reluctant rock star with a conscience, shouting into a void already filled with the echoes of other voices. Like many double albums, there is a fine single album here fighting to get out. If only.

It may not be his most cohesive collection but when it comes to concocting sad bangers artfully combining bittersweet emotion with mesmeric dance grooves, Moby is too good to dismiss.

Whilst Paramore's music tends to be all rage and release, solo Williams offers something much more quirky and cerebral, delving poetically and occasionally combatively into her insecurities. The elaborate intricacy of writing and production may be a lot to take in for all but devoted fans.

The full band arrangements are tastefully understated, and the 47-year-old sustains a mood of gentle sorrow and hard-earned wisdom that is easy on the ear. It is well trodden territory but Jurado is a class act.

Seven-minute mantra There Must Be More Than Blood is the standout, where Toledo’s vocals are absorbed into a motorik groove, his quest for meaning somehow dissolving into an act of musical surrender. Not all the songs reach these heights, however; too many run out of ideas very quickly. But at their very best, Car Seat Headrest are reminiscent of such fantastic bands as The The, LCD Soundsystem and Talking Heads.

There are interesting multi-part song structures and deft modern production quirks, with touches of autotune and sampling that don’t overwhelm the more classic guitar and keyboard arrangements. Melodies are big and bright and everything is encased in walls of harmonies.

It may be just another Ron Sexsmith album about the romance of the everyday but that could be just the balm your spirits need in troubled times.

It is an ambitious and technically impressive album grappling with big themes of love in a time of disaster. Lyrically, though, it is all a bit prosaic, whilst O’Brien’s voice is pleasant but lacking the kind of distinctive tone and delivery that makes you want to pay attention.

It is not unappealing, but such portmanteau pop really needs strong guiding principles to add up to more than the sum of its individual parts.

This is not an album that will make The Strokes new friends, but it might satisfy the faithful. Sometimes it is enough just to sound great.

At its best, the grooves have the funky plasticity of an electro-Prince, sprinkled with baffling but thought-provoking lyrics. At its laziest, it sounds like a mumble rapper warming up over a jam whilst doing throat exercises. It's got groove though, and enough mysterious depths to warrant further investigation if you should somehow find yourself stuck at home with nothing better to do.

It is edgy fun with pitch-black humour masking real emotional content, although the tension between the darkness of the lyrics and sweetness of the vocals wears thin over a whole album.

The glossy results lack any particular character. Peppered with hooks and catchy melodies, everything sounds like something you might have heard somewhere before, which in the case of Ed Sheeran soundalike single No Judgement you almost certainly have.

His songs are charming but inconsequential, resolutely old-fashioned, drawing influences from offbeat singer-songwriters of a certain vintage.

That Cabello is clearly a fine singer hasn’t stopped producers smoothing her with Auto-Tune. Romance is state-of-the-art pop yet it lacks the real romance of music made from the heart. If you feel like you’ve heard it before, it may be because you literally have.

From Out of Nowhere could be an ELO album from 40 years ago, albeit with a bit of added digital polish.

They’ve tried to update the quintessentially Eighties sound of the original to make it fit for a modern audience. The result is often a strange hybrid, which is enjoyable only as long as one doesn’t expect to hear too much Miles Davis.

Yet the over-riding sense of her almost unremittingly sombre sixth album, Norman F______ Rockwell!, is of Del Rey shedding veils of production mystery at the risk of being revealed as just another over sensitive and particularly self-absorbed singer-songwriter.

Across a baggy 18 tracks, Egoli maintains a sense of purpose, but only comes into sharp focus when a particular artist grabs the reins.

Madame X sounds like three different albums fighting for space. There’s the Latin pop album, in Madonna performs straight-up sexy dance duets aimed at the world’s fastest growing music market. There’s a strand of trendy, low-slung, sensitive trap pop that lacks the majestic swagger you expect from a grand dame of the game. And neither of these elements sits comfortably alongside the Mirwais spine of fizzy art pop marrying mad production with inflated lyrical themes. Madonna says she is fighting ageism but she is fighting on too many fronts at the same time.

The atmosphere is ultimately so paranoid and competitive, he makes being a rap star sound exhausting. Ignorance Is Bliss is at its most interesting when Skepta's volatile emotional state pushes to the surface of his combative persona.

This is bold, weird, beautiful stuff, but the listener has their work cut out getting to it. Ironically, the core of I Am Easy to Find is not particularly easy to find. At all.

An all-killer, no-filler approach ensures every track pulls its weight, yet the album never quite adds up to more than the sum of its pleasant parts.

This is the closest he has ever got to recreating the mesmeric intensity and emotional release of Urban Hymns. He has thankfully ditched the electronic effects that tried to lend 2016's These People a vestige of pop modernity.

They are peppered with witty lines but, like an over-repeated punchline, the humour wears thin. For all its gorgeous highlights and overall brilliance, Love Is Magic is an album that is hard to love.

Nelson co-writes many of Gaga’s songs too, which essay a slightly awkward journey from rock balladry to slickly superficial pop. In one sense, there is a tangible jump in standards as Gaga comes to the fore on the second half of the album--she is a major musical talent. But there is also a weird disconnect as the soundtrack shifts gear to anodyne modern pop.

Wanderer is an album of peculiar little songs that you won't hear in anyone else's catalogue. It is ungainly, odd, and at times almost amateurish. For some, Cat Power will always sound slightly unfinished. For others, it is exactly that quality that makes her records ring with raw truth.

It is a testament to just how utterly robust these songs are that the results are, inescapably, joyous. The recordings have been given a bit of digital oomph, with all the sounds polished and honed, and levels kicked up a notch, so the result is dense and shiny, with a relentlessly modern attack.

Lurking behind the sisterly triumphalism, though, is a conflicted message about being rescued from the shelf (“All before I lose my faith/ Just like magic, he came and saved my fall from grace”), and it has the unfortunate effect of turning a march of the Valkyries into a last stand of the spinsters. But sexual politics aside (and we will get to that), All Saints’ new album is pretty great, one you wished they had made back in 2001, when people might have cared.

The Now Now ultimately sounds exactly what it is: music made on the road as an escape from homesickness.

Every track is polished and purposeful, but the sheer busy quality of her singing and overactive variety of the production ensures that Liberation never settles into a coherent listening experience.

All Bay has really done is exchange one set of generic production clichés for another.

Apart from the smattering of country inflections, there are no great surprises in store.

Man of the Woods pitches unevenly between town and country, with folky campfire songs about the joys of nature arranged around electronic rhythms and electro funk. The two strains don’t really get along. When it’s bad, it’s cringe-inducing. But when it’s good, it’s world-beating.

It is bright and busy, peppered with guest appearances. But the risk is that this extremely versatile star winds up sounding like a guest at his own party.

Despite having been layered and processed through Autotune, her voice conveys genuine intimacy. Cabello had a hand in the writing, and a few songs convey a charming honesty and vulnerability, perhaps a relic of the album’s original themes. But there remains a gulf between the craft of commercial pop and the artistry of confessional songwriting, and there is not much doubt about which has been prioritised on Camila.

Simultaneously beautiful and befuddling, dazzling and irritating, Utopia has something of Stravinsky or Stockhausen about it. On some level, it may be a work of brilliance, but I suspect it is too far adrift from the rest of pop culture to appeal to anyone but a Björk devotee.

It is hard to get overheated about something so determinedly tepid. And yet, dropped amid the frenzy of pop radio, Horan’s songs are immediately distinctive.

Concrete and Gold is an ambitious and entertaining album. But when it comes to a comparison with Sergeant Pepper, it doesn’t earn its stripes.

A sense of sisterhood is a huge part of Haim’s appeal, yet the humorous camaraderie and rocky swagger they present on stage all but vanishes in the studio.

The more time you spend with each song, the more it sounds like a variation on something you’ve heard done better before, a formula in search of a hook.

Styles’s curveball is more eccentric but more appealing, with an endearing quality of relish in its musical adventures. It is so old-fashioned it may actually come across as something new to its target audience.

Easier to admire than to care deeply about, Youth should confirm his status as the go-to rapper for people who don’t really like rap music.

Goldfrapp hark back to the bombast of a time when electronica was all about man (or woman) versus machine. On Silver Eye, the machines are ascendant.

Occasional lines jerk out of the mix as Dylan struggles for control of his vocal chords. But his unique phrasing and delivery is usually right on the nose of the song’s meaning.

Hardwired is two CDs, 12 tracks and 80 minutes of in-your-face, punch-to-the-guts, dense, harsh, shouty rage with absolutely no let-up. Frankly, if it was half as long it would be twice as effective.

At least half of The Heavy Entertainment Show is made up of amusing dance tracks that never quite hit the spot.

For Kings of Leon to remain interesting and relevant, they need to stop trying to be the band the music business seems to want them to be and start following Caleb Followill’s muse wherever it leads.

Wilson’s vocals are endearingly shaky, as if he is too proud to submit to the autotune and chorus effects that make every modern pop star sound the same. But if, at times, it sounds like a band trying too hard, it is surely better than not trying at all.

It may be nothing more than an exercise in maintaining the brand of the 21st Century’s most vacant superstar but, in its perfectly distilled empty pleasures, Glory might just be Britney’s masterpiece.

There’s plenty to applaud on a promising debut, but, as yet, not enough to believe in.

Views genuinely makes for mesmerising listening, even if much of the album seems to consists of lazy meanders through Drake's psyche.

[Willie Nelson] brings feeling and charm to these 11 covers.

This began life as an art project at Somerset House, with Harvey composing and recording in a makeshift studio before a viewing public. Such pressurised circumstances might explain the absence of any sense of real pleasure in the finished work. I don’t hesitate to hail it as impressive but it does feel more civic project than classic album.

At times, though, the bleepy, burbling “fun” gets too wacky and cheesy for even PSB’s long-standing irony to uphold.

Although it's a bright and buoyant effort--with recognisable touches of ska and reggae--her new album lacks the left-field flourishes that make her special.

There is much to be admired here, rather less to be enjoyed.

This, for better or worse, is clearly the music Rihanna likes: leftfield, stoned and strange. It is Rihanna without hits. This strange album, released without warning over the internet for free, may well be a reflection of the fact that not even her own backers really expects this to be a commercial blockbuster. It is more an exercise in rebranding, transforming the hit girl into a serious artist.

Rod Picott achieves his aim of making an authentic studio version of his live shows in his new album Fortune. The material is sometimes contemporary.

Athough the two old giants of country music can't hit all the notes of youth their phrasing is neat and nuanced on their fourth album together.

Fans will miss the mordant voice and songwriting of Doves frontman Jimi Goodwin (whose 2014 solo debut Odulek found him pondering how to recover your youth and giving up the booze: “What have I got to lose?”) But the brothers acquit themselves well here.

Throughout, the band’s big, bittersweet sound is, as ever, wonderfully immersive: whalesong cycles of electric guitar echoing through a buoyant soup of synths that sound both pleasant and forgettable.

It’s moderately uplifting, all pretty easy going and easy listening.

Clocking in at over an hour, it’s a classy work which doesn’t try to reinvent its star, so much as give her a space in which to shimmer, simmer and occasionally simper her way through a surprisingly subtle and inventive spectrum of musical moods.... Lyrically, there’s often a lack of narrative, but Jackson succeeds in reining in the badly written sex talk which let down her last few records.

Real Life builds up to a pitch of doomed drama from a corrosive slash of guitar as Tesfaye confides that even his “Mama called me destructive”. But Ed Sheeran fails to rescue him on the tedious Dark Times and Lana Del Rey--who ought to be his perfect partner in pop-noir--adds nothing but a bored spritz of vocal perfume to the lethargic Prisoner.

There's plenty of variety on Watkins Family Hour, with each member of the band getting a turn as lead vocalist.

He brings real feeling to his own compositions such as Let Me Sleep (At the end of a Dream).

The best of the album is so fantastic it makes me want more from the rest.... Yet there is something tepid about the overall emotional temperature.

Even if Years & Years aren’t taking any risks with the sound of the moment, they use it to good effect.

There are songs about baseball, weather and enduring domestic love, acutely observed and delivered in tones so smooth they slip past in a soft blur.

The songs are weak, the sounds cheesily overfamiliar and a slightly second-rate string of collaborators (he wanted Lady Gaga and Rihanna but settled for Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears) fail to sprinkle the beats with any magic.

Hucknall appears to have got some of his mojo back, with added sincerity.

As if set free from seriousness, they knock out some polished, off-kilter pop gems about inadequate individuals.

The record could do with more tunes to make use of that talent, but it’s still nice to see him back.

Canadian band Great Lake Swimmers excel on I Was a Wayward Pastel Bay, a gentle song which shows off frontman Tony Dekker’s country music skills.

It's a sprawling beast of an album and a remarkable piece of creativety from 68-year-old Russell.

Yet for all its exuberant DIY spirit, Young Fathers’ songs sound like another bunch of interesting demos, full of passion, spontaneity and left-field inspiration, but too often failing to really nail the song or message down.

Making music by numbers shouldn’t be this tiring.

Fans will find much to enjoy here, but it might be time for Knopfler to push himself out of his comfort zone.

There is a neat cover of Creedence’s Have You Ever Seen the Rain but the best songs are her own heartfelt and brooding country ones.

More solid, stadium stompers bulk out this second album.

Play it soft, and it drifts into the background. Play it loud and something much more vigorous and compelling emerges.

Crazy In Love aside, this generically pleasant and wafty album makes a better accompaniment to laundering sheets than rolling in (or being tied up with) them.

It is a lovely Valentine record, if you favour melancholic songs about missed chances. The set feels overfamiliar, though, drawing heavily on classic Seventies ballads by the Carpenters, Eagles, Elton John and 10CC.

She just needs to read more self-help than she spouts, and show us that she has more depth than bass.

That this is Manson’s most accessible and focused album in years counts for very little; there is simply no shock value when all you have to offer are cheap shocks.

Atlanta-based producer Ben H Allen (who has worked with Animal Collective and CeeLo Green) has beefed up their sound, although a taste for clean sonic lines and cheesy keyboards retains a power to grate.

Archive seem strangely restricted, dulling their more inventive edges with a black-and-white quality of mood, texture, rhythm and melody, that leaves you craving emotional colour.

The result for Take That is what you would expect: slick production-line pop that puts all the verses, choruses, hooks and beats in the right place, or at least the places we usually find them.

If the production is too clean, it does at least reveal Johnson in glorious high definition with his Telecaster, simultaneously stabbing the chords while letting the licks bleed out with liquid heat.

Although what follows isn’t all as good as the opener, it’s solid, vertebrae-jolting stuff, often recycling old themes and melodies.

Her smarter, odder lines (“Put your hand on my piano”) stand out amid the clubbing clichés, though her high, slightly strangled, often shouted vocals don’t.