Dark Times undoubtedly makes for more challenging listening than Ramona…, but for listeners willing to put in the time and effort, prepare to be rewarded.

Sometimes, Cage the Elephant’s lyrics can veer into a teen angst that jars against their middle-aged image: “I don’t want to play those games, will we ever be the same?”. But when they sound this good, they can just about get away with it.

Eilish has made something rich, strange, smart, sad and wise enough to stand comparison with that classic [Joni Mitchell's Blue], a heartbreak masterpiece for her generation, and for the ages.

Chinouriri has cited African choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo as one of her major inspirations – alongside Coldplay, Lily Allen and the indie folk trio Daughter. It’s her range that lends Chinouriri success in this latest release.

A Dream Is All We Know is that rare thing: a perfectly crafted, concise collection of 12 songs that brim over with good-will and optimism.

Lipa’s cooly commanding voice holds the attention on expansive melodies that make the most of her range, flowing between rich low tones, a husky middle and sweet highs. It is precise, luxurious, energetic without ever really breaking a sweat.

At times you might wish for a bit more sonic edge to match some of the biting lyrics, but this is a solid debut from exciting young talent – there’s little evidence of any teething problems here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

PinkPantheress’s pop gift is to make something airily attractive out of elements that could be brain melting, as if singing with the internal voice of a generation numbed by the everything goes-ness of the internet.

Swift’s remake is astonishing in its exactitude, another reminder that she is a star of a different magnitude with a mastery of her own talents and a bold business acumen. .... All of the new songs are satisfyingly deft and clever, replete with sinuous melodies, burbling synths and agitated percussion that correspond with the updated eighties stylings of the original. .... The one new song that really punches its weight with Swift’s original 1989 singles is the razor sharp Is It Over Now?

The new Rolling Stones album is the best thing they have made since their Seventies glory days. Which, it might reasonably be argued, de facto makes it the best rock’n’ roll album of the past four decades at least.

This is an album that underlines the greatness of Dark Side, rather than challenges it.

Sheeran sounds like a supercharged David Gray. Grown-up. Energised. Forget Autumn, this feels like an album of bright new dawns.

Tension is Minogue’s 16th album, and certainly ranks among her best.

Relentless might just be one of the most thrilling things you’ll hear all year. It’s a slow-burning triumph, its 12 tracks oscillating between squalling and shimmering rockers and richly-realised ballads thanks in large part to Hynde’s masterly co-writer and guitarist James Walbourne.

This album won’t be for everyone, but it’s quite the trip.

There are plenty of artists who make music occupying the same space as Mitski – reflective, weepy, introspective – but she stands alone in her lyricism and heart; on this album, she also seems less frightened by the potential fruits of her own talent.

The album is peppered with playful uses of samples. It’s deeply sophisticated music – an astute melting pot of genres bound together by the latest production techniques.

Ten years ago, Icona Pop were electropop trailblazers: for the most part, this second album is a promising next step in their recording career.

The kids might not understand, but rock fans should be delighted that Kerr and Thatcher are still in the ring, giving it everything they’ve got.

This confident and assured album surely ranks among his best.

If sensuous, whip smart R’n’B rocks your boat, Victoria Monét’s debut album, Jaguar II, is a luxurious treat.

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.

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.

It hasn’t exactly all been easy listening, but still definitely Lydon’s most approachable album ever. It sounds as though it was hard-earnt light relief for him, fun for its chief protagonist to make, and with repeat plays it only proves increasingly infectious.

There is no real attempt to deliver definitive readings, with the vocal interplay between Mitchell, Carlile and Mumford on A Case of You shifting from the original’s romantic intensity to loose and cheerful celebration. Nonetheless, there are moments that cut to the core, particularly when guest vocalists back off to allow Mitchell space to possess the song in a voice that may be lower and grittier than of yore, but remains supple, powerful and resonant.

Here, in the company of his oldest colleagues, he [Damon Albarn] takes stock of his past in the most finely crafted songs of his later career. It is the sound of Britpop all grown up.

As a generation of UK rappers comes of age, Hus still leads the pack with his pitless charisma, linguistic inventiveness, and musical curiosity.

Though certain tracks like In My Head leave you wishing she’d cut through the glistening sounds and breathy choruses with some power vocals, Mahalia’s pen is sharp, and her raw take on relationships and self-development is delivered with the diva attitude of Mariah Carey and the raspy cool of Erykah Badu.

The Gabriels are making thunderous, thoughtful music with commercial snap.

Here’s what I Inside the Old Year Dying is: beguilingly atmospheric, beautifully crafted, and yet more proof that PJ Harvey is one of our most idiosyncratic artists. It’s wyrd, for sure. But it’s also lwovely.

Amid all the delightful nostalgia comes one glaring disappointment. When Swift committed to the re-recordings, she promised they wouldn’t lose the heart of the original – and the lyrics would stay the same. But on Better Than Revenge, a bitter rebuke to a love rival, she’s done just that.

Now 70 years old, she is back on form with her 15th album.

King of a Land is unlikely to bring in legions of new fans – Yusuf’s Pyramid appearance will hopefully do that. But it’s a lushly beautiful album from one of pop’s master songwriters. Indeed, the medium is perfect – it’s just the message that is a little monothematic.

QOTSA now know what is expected of them after a decade of commercial appeal: rock ‘n’ roll that’s not too heavy, lyrics that aren’t too vicious. Then they decide to stick their middle fingers up and make what they want regardless.

Amaarae – real name Ama Serwah Genfi – has crafted and compiled 14 captivating and refreshing tunes, touching on topics from sensuality to spirituality.

Above all, Joy’All seems like the work of an artist content with floating through life, just having fun – and she’s brought us along for the ride.

If I have a caveat, it is that it is all so single minded, it lacks the dizzying splendour of Monae’s earlier epics. But on its own down and dirty terms, The Age of Pleasure is sheer pleasure.

What comes forth is disarmingly honest music that indicates a newly mature era for UK rap.

Its 10 tracks offer a timely reminder of just why Oasis resonated so widely, empowered by a melodious and snappy songwriter with plenty of heart and soul.

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.

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

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

It feels remarkably intimate: a half-shuttered window into the world of the man behind some of the world’s most famous songs. If only Simon were to pry open said window slightly wider, one would feel more fulfilled – but there’s always future albums for that.

It's a journey in which you don't need to know the words: this music is a licence to feel without prejudice. Like prayers or poetry, the potency is in the cadence, the rhythms, and the stirring of memory and imagination.

Her command over that mass of bodies remains.

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.

By the time Roderick closes out with a fully orchestrated baroque dismissal of a former associate (“I’d like nothing more than you darken my doorstep nevermore,” Vanian politely croons), there can be no doubt that Darkadelia lives up to its foreboding title. It also represents one of Britain’s most idiosyncratic and enduringly excellent rock bands, in thrilling form.

First Two Pages of Frankenstein is up there with Boxer, the band’s 2007 album on which they thrillingly found their musical feet. This is the sound of a band who’ve honed their sound to such an extent that they’re now towing a whole new generation in their wake.

As a follow-up to What’s Your Pleasure?, it’s inevitably a little doomed, lacking that record’s magical conditions: the unexpectedly fresh energy amid the lethargy of lockdown. Still, after Pleasure’s anticipatory teasing, That! Feels Good! offers a perfectly competent climax.

These are songs rich in detail, soul deep, often burdened with worry and a lifetime’s baggage, yet it’s the hazy sense of a drifter’s freedom in New Magic II which wins through, lifting your spirits time and again.

The 60-year-old producer has clearly been keeping an aficionado’s ear on developments in digital electronica, and there is nothing particularly retro or dated about this comeback. Thorn’s voice has a timelessness that will always sound contemporary. She never strains or overemotes but lets her instinct for elegant melody and the understated intelligence of her lyrics carry the dramatic weight.

You can get lost in the whole EP, which possesses all the quality and thought of a full-formed album, but flickers by like the yellow windows of a train in the dark, travelling on to somewhere new.

The timeless appeal of Carnival is echoed in Keep Your Courage, which speaks volumes for the cohesive, eternal quality of Merchant's ability to weave romantic, folk-rock ballads rich with organ, brass, and tidal waves of strings all anchored to simple piano melodies.

Multitudes is a perfect assertion of that power, by turns reflective and commanding.

Metallica have made their Metallica record again.

As a 40-minute listening experience, it’s equal parts eccentric and impassioned, thought-provoking and out-there – if not exactly fun, given the mental-health issues, then certainly liberating, nourishing and thoroughly memorable.

Goulding’s spectacularly tremulous vibrato, raw mid-range and fluttery high notes imprint unique character on everything she sings. It’s a voice that can make even her “least personal” record sound very personal indeed.

This is stand-up-and-listen music, commanding attention in surprising ways. Being suggests that far from mellowing with age, Maal – who turns 70 in June – remains as eager and excited to explore new frontiers as he ever was.

More than half a century later, those youthful ambitions are herein fulfilled, in 10 tracks of maturity and majesty.

The album sounds like something knocked out almost live in a spirit of excitement, rather than with objective vision or commercial muscle. I’d be hard pressed to assert that this (unlike CS&N) amounts to more than the sum of its parts, rather than a celebration of great parts. But it is impossible to argue that as a group, Boygenius are pretty super.

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.

The crooning, woozy indie-pop of So Hard To Tell is reassurance Friday has a full spectrum of emotional arrows in her quiver and she’s going to hit all her targets.

Erasing the muscular power of an amplified rock combo, Edge explores ways to let other elements shine. In particular, the focus is on Bono’s older yet still powerful voice, devoid of posturing and mannerisms, really digging into meaning and melody. The subtle rumble of Adam Clayton’s bass and tastefully executed percussion from Larry Mullen Jr make themselves felt in all the right places, with full band arrangements breathing new life into a smattering of undernourished songs.

Sleaford Mods have lost none of their political bite, humour, and astute observational skill. UK Grim will cement their place as one of Britain’s most influential – and successful – UK bands.

Morrison’s joy in tackling this rich repertoire is palpable.

Indeed, for all the slick but formulaic pleasures of the album’s mainstream pop push, it is arguably that Cyrus is at her most compelling when she dances like no one is watching.

From the opening chimes and birdsong to her sultry vocals, the album cocoons you entirely in its plush, sensuous world.

Ugly makes for difficult listening in places, but that’s not to say it isn’t often brilliant. Experimental, disarmingly honest and conceptually tight, blending rap, alt-rock and electronica, there’s no denying that Frampton is putting in the work.

Brimming with both spiritual depth and astonishing musical dexterity, Shook feels contemporary and important, reflecting America’s present-day diversity and letting the disenfranchised speak.

Food for Worms is all the more exciting for its contrasts in brutality and beauty. It’s challenging, consummately constructed, and thrilling throughout.

Thirty years on, Albarn sounds just as dissatisfied with the state of the modern world, yet he still appears to have at least a cartoon finger on its pulse.

Come for the drama, but stay and swoon for Lambert’s intoxicating, heartfelt closer: Dinah Washington’s Mad About the Boy.

She has drawn comparison with Kate Bush and Bjork, not because she sounds like them, but because she has a similar blend of extraordinary vocal ability, florid imagination, and genre-bending boldness. Desire is the album where it all comes together for this late blooming art-pop siren.

The quality wanes a little in the album’s second half, but there are four or five bangers, all told – ample firepower to win fresh converts while supporting both Harry Styles and Arctic Monkeys on the stadium circuit this summer.

Quest for Fire is still visceral EDM designed to get the pulse racing, but the whole thing has been given an ambitious refresh. The second coming of Skrillex starts here.

Vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Ira Kaplan, percussionist and pianist Georgia Hubley, and bassist James McNew sound as fresh and relevant now as they ever have.

Williams’s song C’est Comme Ça perfectly sums up the album: a reckoning with change, a refusal to deliver the same-old tricks even when it’s the easier option.

Months from her 40th birthday, Ethiopian-American artist Kelela Mizanekristos has blessed us with a sexy, sultry masterclass in RnB.