Like every previous Pet Shop Boys album, Nonetheless is clever, fun, and at times very touching.

Clark never makes the mistake of letting an instinct for experiment detract from her elegant pop songcraft. All Born Screaming is an art-rock classic for the ages.

Variably groovy and often catchy, Hyperdrama represents a marked improvement in Justice’s output. It’s easy to see why the band have had such a hard time topping Cross, however: Generator, the album’s strongest track, proves they’re still at their best when they stick to the sound that put them on the map 17 years ago.

While it is less commercially focused, there is no discernible drop of quality on the expanded Anthology, crammed to bursting with beautifully worked songs that add different shades and angles to her essential premise of a woman working out why her love life has left her in such emotional tatters.

This irresistible album is yet more evidence that London’s musical scene might just be the liveliest in the world.

Made up of 11 taut tracks, the highlights come thick and fast.

In terms of emotional insight and sheer singer-songwriter genius, it is not in the league of such heartbreak classics as Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Joni Mitchell's Blue, but at least it reaches for such heights.

With This Could Be Texas, Leeds-based quartet English Teacher have crafted a record really quite striking in its lyrical and sonic ambition.

If you like Knopfler’s flavour, One Deep River will be a treat. Indeed, if you walked into a bar and caught this outfit in action, you’d surely stop and pay attention, nodding along in gentle pleasure at the veteran musicianship and easy-on-the ear ambience. Yet in the context of his own discography, it lacks the imagination, ambition and stratospheric guitar playing that made Dire Straits one of the most popular bands of all time.

This fourth may not reach those heights [of the first two albums], but it’s a solid effort from a band who, above all else, just sound grateful to have survived.

Clever, sexy, angry, soulful, witty and fantastically bold, Beyoncé stirs up the western and puts the you know what into country. I think it’s a masterpiece, but don’t expect to hear it at the Grand Ole’ Opry any time soon.

The best thing about Real Power is the way three perfectly balanced musicians concoct a sound of such thrilling dynamism, wit and energy without ever getting in each other’s way.

Another beautiful slice of country-tinged magic that never descends into nostalgia.

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.

Everything I Thought I Was is certainly not the career defining masterwork Timberlake seems to think it is, but nevertheless it’s enough to get him over that mid-life bump.

Eternal Sunshine is pop at its sexiest – 13 songs designed to lodge themselves in your head for eternity, whether you like it or not.

You don’t have to be greater than the sum of your parts when the parts are already as great as this.

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.

Lopez’s voice is technically fine but has a thinness that doesn’t really suit the exposure of digitally clinical modern production settings. She jettisons all Latin flavouring, which might have been her superpower.

Coming Home is a hugely impressive reminder of Usher's pop skills, and another testament to the enduring appeal of high class RnB.

It’s a remarkably polished debut.

Wall of Eyes comprises just eight tracks but it’s far from slight. String arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra add a lush cinematic quality to the album.

Little Rope is undoubtedly Sleater-Kinney’s most commercial album yet. Crusader, in particular, brings to mind the palatable grunginess of No Doubt, and lead single Say It Like You Mean It – with a video starring Succession’s J Smith-Cameron – echoes WH Auden’s Funeral Blues.

Even at its most ambitious, everything is swept up in a blizzard of overcharged guitars and stylised snarling that would have sounded old-fashioned in 1981, let alone 2024.

If you simply want to revel in the elemental pleasures of sleek, clever, catchy songs played with rough vigour by a band who love to rock, then the Vaccines deliver their usual payload. .... They lack the boldness of the bands that most influenced their sound (The Ramones, Jesus and the Mary Chain) or the flair and ambition of others still flying the pop-rock flag (The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines). On this evidence, The Vaccines are approaching their expiry date.

The mix of trap grooves and synth balladry is perfectly of the moment, lacking the boldness of a truly original talent. Yet there is something appealing in the sweet melodies and sour attitude of a singer who sounds like she might actually be starting to enjoy herself.

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.

Nine originals interspersed with the overfamiliar classics indicate a songwriter’s fascination with rock form, but only I Want You Back (sung with Steven Tyler) justifies its position nestled between so many inarguable classics.