Far from a behind-the-scenes veil-lifting, though, 'Doggumentary' largely ensures that the worst preconceptions of self-indulgent hip-hop remain in place.

Unforgivably bad.

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.

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.

Therein lies the danger of building an iconic persona on your current obsessions and an unerring belief in everyone else's interest in your thoughts. When it hits gold, it's magnetic; when judgement lapses, the convictions seem tired.

You can forgive Cruz for wondering who he's meant to be for his second album, but we're less indulgent of such wishy-washy nonsense that "Rokstarr" puts across in the name of heartfelt R&B.

Because beneath the clownishly self-effacing exterior, there's an artless ambition at work here that's terrible to behold.

Herein lays Wayne's problem: he clearly has no understanding of rock.

Everything about this album smacks of contrivance and careful planning.

Driving yet jaunty guitars abound and backing chants fill the required spaces, yet it all comes across too much like a sub-par parody of their former selves.

The big-beated momentum of yore is bogged down in McClure's new graceless Gallagher sneer and left to stagnate by a band more interested in re-heating anaemic Kasabian-esque psychedelia than building a plinth from which to preach.

If the "Energy Never Dies", as Black Eyed Peas' acronymically-titled fifth album has us believe, why do they continually sound like the most tired, idea-less group on the block?

The truth is most of this new record is karaoke, too--it's just that, like their fans, the band are so desperate to mean something that they have the gall to call it 'new'.

The record has some horrific moments, nearly all of them Borrell's.

Unfortunately for the oh-so-cleverly named Mongrel are nothing more than a patronising exercise in telling the poor listener what they already know: that governments can be corrupt, war on the whole is not pleasant and we all have a right to freedom.

The Spirit Of Apollo, a record boasting some of the most pioneering musical talent of the last three decades, does not sound "timeless" but nor does it seem an appropriate tonic, voices passing unheralded in a confusion of mediocre, glossy production, guests from the stratosphere reduced to faces in the crowd.

People will tell you Ladyhawke is fresh and exciting. They're wrong. It's horrendous.

Earth To The Dandy Warhols is just vacuous mid-tempo babble and clatter.

Songs that used to bounce and strut with foolhardy glee now amble, lamenting, the stench of booze and self-pity turning Romance At Short Notice into a wake.

The lumbering, ponderous nature of both music and vocals elsewhere makes you wonder if much of Songs In A&E wasn't actually recorded in hospital.

The rest of the tracks bop along with various degrees of offensiveness or inoffensiveness, troubling and achieving nothing.

His voice still sounds like it could curdle milk, an anaemic whine with no substance. Song-wise, this is mass-production fodder about which there's very little one can say.

This is pretty fluffy stuff.

This lumpen, bloated, boring album is as much of a let-down as any of Timbaland's other "solo" works.

The suspicion that Mika might have major talent under the plagiarism and cynicism is what makes "Life In Cartoon Motion" so remarkably unlovely.

Track after track in an aimless blur of humming amps, pointless mucking about with effects, dreary jams propelled by meandering guitar interplay, and bleak, endless droning.

"Christ Illusion" for the most part consists of leaden, grinding sludge devoid of any urgency or malevolence.

Beyond the artificiality of this album's every attempt to be loved, what's most surprising is Pharrell's failure to program so much as a decent beat.