It's mixed-up, mashed-up and flagrantly, unapologetically odd. It's everything we want The Go! Team to be. But with added extras.

Crucially though, what Diddy lacks in eloquence he makes up for in pop sensibility, which here keeps edgier elements the right side of radio friendly.

If Adele's debut '19' marked her out as a young chanteuse with a booming voice, her follow-up '21' has shown a maturity in her songwriting that makes her the de facto authority when it comes to soundtracks to broken hearts.

Despite some great tunes, his high-pitched, duck-on-helium vocals start wearing thin, becoming the detraction, rather than the attraction, of this album. Had it been 15 minutes shorter, The Lady Killer could have been this year's top pop album.

Epic, exciting, strange and unexpected, it's exactly what pop needed, but surely not quite what Gary Barlow had in mind.

Winner Stays On proves that crossing over needn't be a terrible business.

If his family and creditors truly cared about Michael Jackson's legacy, they would now let it and him rest in peace. And chimps will fly...

So far so daft but what prevents Gerard Way and co from descending into the po-faced seriousness that blighted Green Day and their preposterous "21st Century Breakdown" album is a sense of fun that has eluded the SoCal punks in their latter years.

After coming out fighting last time round off the back of a messy, violent break-up with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, it's nice to hear Rihanna getting back to something approaching normality on Loud.

He may not possess the eloquence or understated flair of a (Neil) Hannon or a (Richard) Hawley, a fact highlighted as the cheesy horn arrangement of 'Run With The Boys' sends things all a bit too Phil Collins, but most songs here play host to a charming menagerie of ideas and perhaps prove that the band dynamic he's lusted after to this point was the one thing holding him back.

It's not just that these sentiments are timeless - these songs, in these hands, are only now receiving their definitive interpretations.

Playful yet touching at (almost) every turn, Write About Love may not shake any musical foundations but it certainly proves that Belle and Sebastian still can't be pigeon-holed.

While never as life-changing as these memories clearly were, Hurricane succeeds in its sheer force of conviction.

The Defamation Of Strickland Banks is an unlikely, remarkably successful stab at launching the first major new male star of the decade.

With such brilliantly explicit expositions of death, loneliness and faith in his words, there's more than enough here to soften the blow about that other thing he was supposed to do.

This is Gold Panda's own record, an album of proper emotional heft that'll be enjoyed with a box of tissues, during tingling comedowns and on more discerning dancefloors.

Where she was once a gutsy folk-pop mature-student, tailor-made for the modern-day Radio 2, she now has the power and arrangements to begin approximating the diva she tried to sell us when collecting Brit Awards for her debut album mid-decade, punching the air for women in pop and attempting to align herself with Kate Bush.

Hurley's feet are firmly rooted in the present but this collection is, without doubt, the closest the band have come to recapturing their glory days.

Almost everything here boils down to Cave's perennial concerns of sex and violence, rather than any Dark Lord of rock'n'roll stuff, coming loaded with lines to make even the most grave-faced goth chortle into their gruel.

The suspicion lingers that Band Of Joy will be remembered more fondly than its wonderful predecessor.

Lady Gaga apart, the most interesting stars in 2010 are women in their 30s and beyond, artists with phosphorescent personalities that might burn the fingers of anyone wishing to mould them. Singers like Alison Goldfrapp, Grace Jones and Robyn Miriam Carlsson.

This is a relentlessly exciting album--it's just that sometimes you feel it would be more rewarding to turn off the boosters, slow to a float, and take in the view with awe.

It's likely to be a defining point in their career even if it's not their definitive release.

This is a contemporary collection of eclectic modern folk songs by a bold woman who has more in common with an interesting raft of contemporaries than her mentor.

Take those hats off and launch them into the air for one of the most uplifting, career-topping albums anyone could have released, regardless of age.

There is a tendency, due to the slow, quiet nature of these songs and the occasionally syrupy harmonies, for them to blend together. But look beneath the surface, to the fragile emotions that inspired these songs, and The Runaway remains a moving exercise in good old fashioned catharsis, one that exposes the sad hearts of this band more than ever before.

She might be mouthy, trendy, shallow and opinionated without having all of the facts, but MIA creates terrific pop moments.

For the most part, it sounds like the most joyous exploration of death and madness since, perhaps, "They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!"