There are a couple of songs so overfamiliar that Boyle can do little to revitalise them, including a predictable trudge through 'Auld Lang Syne' and the saccharine overdose of 'Away In A Manger', but Boyle herself once again emerges from trashy circumstances with class intact.

Kanye's ...Dark Twisted Fantasy is also the densely-produced work of a clearly erratic soul.

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.

Swift's thoughtful honesty and surprisingly articulate take on life should be commended.

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

It's all a show with Kings Of Leon, and there's nothing they yearn for more than the chance to exercise their sexual prowess.

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.

He, like Ashcroft before RPA & The United Nations Of Sound, has absolutely no idea how rubbish he's capable of being. Take note Liam, and be careful.

You certainly don't reject it outright though, not immediately, as almost every song at least knows the function of a chorus and everything has a glittery and palatable radiance, but such anodyne, airbrushed electro-pop leaves you searching for the magic ingredients.

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.

Evidently it's his source material that defines him, and this time it's disappointingly weak.

With so much of the joyous, uplifting and just plain life-affirming Motown back catalogue freely available (not to mention the any number of soul all-nighters dotted across the country), Going Back is a redundant exercise into one man's nostalgia.

It's hard to imagine how Hands All Over could have been any more underwhelming. In truth the only exceptional thing about it is just how average it is.

The Welsh agit-poppers' tenth album isn't terrible--certainly not as listless or confused as Lifeblood--but it does sound lazy, lyrically and sonically.

Like the three Killers albums, Flamingo is patchy, the sound of a vivid talent not living up to its initial promise.

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.

Instead of ending tensely and dramatically they are the final whimper and sigh of an album named after a band that have lost their way and aren't sure which direction they should be heading.

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.

There's none of the ABBA or Cardigans influence she claimed, nor any of the fun she seems to have in real life. For now she just sounds like another of pop's Stepford Wives.

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.