The results rate with his best work, by turns reflective and attacking, on which lyrics sparkle and music breathes and flows with a sure touch.

It is, in short, and as we might have expected, a work of genius.

This is a terrific album, full of dignity.

You Are Not Alone, her 2010 collaboration with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, won Staples her first Grammy. The follow up is even better.

Electric is the second really fantastic pop-dance blast of the year.

Unsurprisingly, loss and grief lie at the core of the Foo Fighters’ most succinct and intense album.

By re-recording the whole of Taylor Swift's 1989, the maverick alt country star has turned a world beating chart smash album into a tender masterpiece of bruised Americana, in the process emphasising the perfect songcraft and exposing the dark heart of emotion beating beneath Swift's gleaming surfaces.

At every turn he unfolds the fists of self-pity into upturned palms of generosity.

Springsteen drives proceedings with acoustic strumming, the rough tones of his voice rooting the symphonic gorgeousness in gritty reality. It stands comparison with his very best solo albums. Lyrics offer character sketches, lives caught with a few deft lines and evocative melodies.

Carnage is infused with profound and almost inescapable grief. But as this particularly audacious singer-songwriter grapples with isolation, loneliness, loss and the hard emotional graft of endurance, all set against a backdrop of apocalyptic threat, the personal becomes universal. Carnage may just be the greatest lockdown album yet.

The lyrics are fantastic, the grooves irresistible, the ideas constantly entertaining. His sense of fun is infectious. It’s good to have James Murphy back doing what he does best.

The most accessible album from Mike Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius) to date, without sacrificing any of his otherworldly strangeness and rich emotionalism. ... It is an album of vast depths that will reward a lot of listening.

Apple’s lyric writing is of the highest standard, even as it moves into the abstractions of her depression incantation Heavy Balloon (“I spread like strawberries/ I climb like peas and beans/ I’ve been sucking it in so long/ That I’m busting at the seams”). Her melodiousness holds together these strangely structured songs, whilst the boldness of her unusual arrangements forces you to adjust your ears and delve deeper into what she is trying to convey. ... This is an album that conveys one woman’s rage, vulnerability, confusion and wisdom in ways that we haven’t quite heard before.

It may not be the kind of definitive album statement that will rock the music world to its foundations but it more than demonstrate that the world’s greatest and longest serving rock band have still got what it takes.

The toughness of Weller's art remains fully present here. An album of beauty and depth, True Meanings is further affirmation of a particularly sincere and probing talent, for whom music is a vocation rather than a career.

Lemonade is by far Beyoncé’s strongest album.

On Over and Even, which was produced by Daniel Martin Moore, she also sings harmony with Will Oldham and Glen Dettinger and allied to riveting guitar work, as it is on My Only Trouble, the result is terrific.

Happily, the words are wonderful and Something More Than Free is an album that grows and grows on you. Producer Dave Cobb is in fine action again and gets the best from the settings behind Isbell's effecting voice. Some of the songs are simply splendid.

11 songs of such staggering clarity that I found myself breathing a sigh of relief halfway through that bands like this still exist in Britain.

Hoodies All Summer is the album that grime has been crying out for, an audacious state-of-the-nation address from one of its most articulate lyricists.

The Gouster [is] raised from the archives as the centre piece of a handsome new 12-CD box set, Who Can I Be Now? (1974-76). ... Finally given its moment in the light, The Gouster is unlikely to become a belated part of the canon, but it is nevertheless a welcome testament to the real heart beating at the centre of Bowie’s pop genius.

There’s a directness, freshness and intimacy to these performances that puts the late, great Beatle George right in your ear, untarnished by time. Not all things must pass, it seems.

You suspect that getting on the wrong side of White would be inadvisable. Thankfully, he has channelled his demons in Lazaretto to create one of the great break-up albums of recent years.

Prine is extraordinary, one of the most eloquent artists of modern times and seeing where it all started, in this super CD, really is something very special.

Bloodsports is bleeding good.

This is an album that sounds like a world of music in itself.

Leonard Cohen’s 14th studio album is a bleak masterpiece for hard times from pop’s longest-serving poet.

Channel Orange is as dazzling as it is baffling, rarely staying still long enough to get a grip on.

What songs they are: melodious, wise, elegantly understated but emotionally resonant.

They have conjured a collection of really strong songs about big subjects, delivered with sensitivity and conviction. Memento Mori stands with the best of their career.

They exhilarate and seduce the listener into a world that makes enduring and acknowledging turbulent times a bit more glamorous.

The content is lovingly packaged in a box neatly dressed-up as one of those giant beat boxes hipsters used to lug around before the advent of the Sony Walkman and the digital revolution that followed.

25 is certainly the equal of its predecessor. What it sacrifices in youthful rawness it makes up in maturity and sheer class. Adele Adkins has taken her time over her third album and it shows.

Subtract still sounds like an Ed Sheeran album, just one that is not trying so hard to be everything to everyone all at once. Sometimes less really is more.

It is not reinventing the pop wheel but everything is done with an appealing combination of taste and passion.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in the snap ’n’ flex with which Kiedis flips out this nonsense. He and Flea (now 53) clearly know how daft they are yet you can also hear how happy they sound to still be pogoing along.

Ultimately, this is a brilliant record about clearing out the emotional crap and stripping things back to their essence – the perfect soundtrack to lull us out of our collective wintering and into some mental spring cleaning.

Like FKA Twigs’s Caprisongs, Beyoncé's Renaissance, and SZA’s SOS, Raye’s My 21st Century Blues deserves to be listened to from start to finish, then again, and again.

Hynes's voice is refined into an emotive croon. Inventive pop from a bright indie talent.

With more restrained tempos and a broader, gentler soundscape, the focus shifts to Flowers’s thoughtful lyrics, lovely melodies and grave yet pliant vocals for the most nuanced and heartfelt set of songs that he (with various co-writers and band members) has ever conjured up.

Price’s fantastic fourth album, Strays, advances boldly into terrain occupied by such exalted US rock craftsmen as Jackson Browne and Tom Petty, with soulful vocal swagger, a widescreen band sound and a poetic lyrical depth that should leave most of her Nashville peers prostrate at her feet.

[Wizkid's] finest body of work so far, showcasing a maturity and an artistic vision that cements his status as one of the most influential people in pop music today.

What an absolute joy it is, in which the grand old man of songcraft flips through his own back pages with genuine relish, a man in his 80’s revisiting the words of his firebrand youth and finding entirely new meanings there.

From the clarion call of The Hosting Of The Shee to the haunting The Faery's Last Song, the result is a fabulous feast of words and music.

WE is their sixth album, and every bit as good as their best. ... With a work as ambitious and boldly realised as WE, Arcade Fire know they have nothing to fear by inviting comparison to rock’s all-time greats.

The production by Jack Antonoff is stunning, with a huge amount happening beneath the surface of what first manifests as a scratchily intimate acoustic-flavoured unplugged band. There is not a weak song or throwaway performance here, amidst many that only reveal their secrets on repeated listening.

The result is the gorgeous Tomorrow is My Turn, which shows off the full singing range and power of the frontwoman for innovative string-band trio the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

This isn't mere cleverness, it's instinctive musicality, buoyed up by three other fine players.

The Decemberists blend rock and folk well (there's even a nod to the famous Raggle Taggle Gypsy Man in a riff on Rox In The Box) and the songwriting crafts pastoral and emotional imaginery into tight-knit, attractive songs. This album is an unexpected treat.

At first listen it sounds messy, but the more you play it, the more inspired and essential each brutal interruption becomes.

Real emotion never gets old. Honey is moving in more senses than one, a hypnotically groovy dance floor opus, set to the beat of Robyn’s tender heart.

Content is their best record since the late-Seventies, packed with savagely danceable riffs and rousingly incisive lyrics about consumerism, domestic fragmentation and political resistance.

Freed from the constrictions of slavish imitation, with production from her new and more experimentally inclined collaborators, Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, these six songs offer an intriguing lens through which to view this more innocent version of the savvy star, imbued with the dreamily nostalgic ambience of an adult remembering her bright-eyed youth.

Strangers is his most measured and thoughtful album to date.

Delta is their best album yet, spiritual solace wrapped in secular anthems.

Like our planet, this album is a rare thing of wonder.

Her songs may be about growing pains, but they’ve got timeless appeal.

Despite the subject matter, this is an invigorating celebration of the joys of great songwriting and proof of the power of one man and his piano.

It's an album undiminished by time, that can still make me want to throw myself around an imaginary mosh pit or curl up in a fetal ball.

The New Faith is hymnal, rich with chants and layered, organic instrumentation. It is deeply and spiritually moving, vibrant and celebratory. Revelatory, even.

A resounding comeback. ... The best thing Cocker has done since Pulp, and that is very good indeed.

This is certainly her strongest album yet, a work of catharsis, therapy and succour. It does what pop music is greatest at: gathering up emotions, focusing them and pouring them out to songs that everybody can sing, but few can sing quite as well as Adele.

From the full tilt title track, the echoing twang of The Buzz, the strutting rock reggae of Lightning Man, the swoonsome torch soul of You Can’t Hurt A Fool and swaggering rush of I Didn’t Know When to Stop, it is a Pretenders album that sounds like it could have been recorded in their first flush, a perfect blend of sensuous vocals and blazing guitars.

Leonard Cohen is back with a posthumous album as great as any from the late period of his considerable canon. And that is very great indeed.

Lyrically, Hozier aims high, addressing social and emotional issues against a backdrop of political and generational anxiety. He uses bold, mythic imagery with a playful spirit that hints at the dark wit of Leonard Cohen.

If Art Official Age is a juicy reaffirmation of Prince pop basics, Plectrumelectrum, his collaborative album with 3rdEyeGirl, represents a more intriguing departure, even if it too reaches back into the past, making a bold connection with a time when Jimi Hendrix was the last great black American rock star, before funk really left rock 'n' roll to the white man.

Stunning. ... With slick, tasteful production from Jack Antanoff built around shining guitars and perfectly balanced vocal arrangements, this is a powerful addition to the genre.

These are beautifully turned songs filled with empathy for downtrodden characters battered by life but always ready to fight back, bridging social distance with langorous melodies and deep emotion. The lockdown may have been a terrible moment for music and musicians, but it has resulted in Taylor’s Swift’s most powerful and mature album to date.

Though consistently ground-breaking and lyrically challenging, Ritual Union never feels like hard work.

An extraordinary debut from a new British-based band who combine a gipsy swagger with tremulous sensitivity and gothic rock drama.

There may be nothing particularly original here, but the gritty ambience of electric instrumentation suits Mumford & Sons’s way with melody, emotion and dynamics. Simply put, the Mumfords rock.

Everything is quite extraordinary; an orchestral poem of spiritual surrender that offers up a gorgeously bleak depiction of “the whole magnificent emptiness”.

It teases and satisfies at once, which is why, unless you’re allergic to Snarky Puppy’s special charm, you’ll want to play this album over and over.

Just Mustard have said they wanted their second album, Heart Under, to make the listener feel like they are driving through a tunnel with the windows down. And on this noisy, wonderfully chaotic record, the band seems to have nailed it. ... The inventive beats make you want to dance.

American Kid is a triumph of songwriting and expressive singing.

Riderless Horse is far from an easy listen for obvious reasons. But hearing the 56-year-old Nastasia describe and attempt to understand these stark events is never less than compelling.

Gospel choirs hum and swell tenderly beneath the rougher edges of his riffs. They add mature, universal gravitas and often a holy ecstacy to an intense, youthful lyrical tangling of religion and romantic obsession that regularly finds him poised "between love and abuse".

This ranks with the very best of Gabriel’s work, which means it is very great indeed. Peter Gabriel is a genius. i/o is a masterpiece. That is all ye need know.

To listen to Hold On Baby is to feel like you are really inside someone else’s world, their voice urgently delivering their most intimate feelings in your ear, transmuting them into pop gold.

The Endless Coloured Ways could have been just another exhibit on the exquisitely curated but ever growing pile of Drake nostalgia. Instead, it’s an essential manual on the art of songwriting.

Only the schmaltzy If I Could Believe left me unmoved. Otherwise, this is a very cool, politically charged collaboration which finds the Roots and Costello at their thrilling best.

This album proves his talent is timeless.

A record with moments of pure, solar heat.

Producers Dave Kaplan and Dave Darling have sanded the new arrangements of smooth oldies such as Gentle on My Mind down to the rough grain. The result is a deeply moving record--a warm, valedictory squeeze of the listener’s hand from the cowboy hunk.

Hozier sounds like what you might get if the late, lamented Jeff Buckley had thrown his lot in with Radiohead to conjure up folk music from the dark side of the moon.

Oh My God is a spiritual album for a secular age, one that tries to distil a sense of the divine from the very act of making music.

It feels as bold and weird as anything in Bowie’s back catalogue, sure to delight some and infuriate others.

It’s surely fair to deduce that the intended ‘reset’ is all about returning pop to its early years’ sense of wonder, both sonically and emotionally. On that level, its nine tracks resoundingly succeed.

The sound of the album is deliberately vibrant and varied.

There is a palpable depth of feeling and meaning in her songs, operating on both personal and universal levels, delivered with subtle dynamism and dizzying imagination. She is a breath of fresh air with the power of a hurricane.

Their last album, The Seldom Seen Kid, managed the rare feat of winning the Mercury prize and huge public affection. So how do Elbow follow it? With continued greatness and without fuss.

Magdalene is a magnificently twisted sci-fi torch album, an enthralling account of love, loss, heartbreak and recovery. It is erotic and neurotic, confounding and revelatory, summoning the spirits of such iconoclastic talents as David Bowie, Kate Bush and Björk while affirming its own unique personality.

Her magnificent fourth album demonstrates that she is one of the best rappers in the world, period.

It's surprisingly accessible, hypnotic and beautiful if you give it time and concentration.

If this was a debut, we would be hailing Andrews as a precocious young genius. But perhaps, in this age of acceleration, amid a pop blizzard of viral memes and instant digital fame, the slow maturing of a truly substantial talent is something to really celebrate.

[A] bravura masterpiece. There is no sugar rush of digital synthetic beats and radio-friendly hooks. This is a dense, intricate mesh of free-flowing jazz, deep Seventies funk and cut-up hip hop with a verbose, hyper-articulate rapper switching up styles and tempos to address contemporary racial politics in a poetic narrative built around a long dark night of the soul.

If you were enchanted by Skeleton Tree’s other-worldly sadness, Lovely Creatures offers an extraordinary illustration of Cave’s restless creativity. It leaves you relishing the possibility that the best is still to come.

This fabulous box-set finally unites the trilogy. Tragic, poignant, yet uplifting, Newbury's tough-guy singing will often inexorably reduce the listener to tears.