“Cheap Trick Live at the Whisky 1977” actually is one of those astonishing releases.

“Every Loser” is just Iggy Pop to the max — lewder, cruder and louder than love, but filled with his usual lust for life.

Although there are hummable potential singles that stick out, such as “Shirt,” and singularly contagious tracks such as “Conceited,” “SOS” is a record meant to be heard in its entirety. It would have been entrancing, surely, at double the length.

Her writing registers with crisp clarity, cutting to the bone of the themes she is excavating. What might be cheap and exhausting in the hands of a lesser artist feels frequently cathartic, an exorcism that is honest about its central challenges but hopeful about our ability to transcend them.

Ultimately, Springsteen’s new soul covers album goes at least a little way toward being a handsome declaration of a life’s inspiration and intention. But it should have been so much more than merely “covering” — and beyond mere survival.

It’s a remarkable time that is documented in superfan-satisfying detail in the 4-CD collection “A Divine Symmetry,” the latest in the long and beautifully compiled series of reissues from the Bowie estate (the vinyl will be available in February).

Obviously, this isn’t a standard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert — see above for plenty of those — but for people who love the sound of a band stretching, showing off, challenging each other and having fun, it’s hard to think of many better albums. ... The album captures what is arguably the best lineup of the band since its original one, with stellar backing vocals from bassist Howie Epstein and auxiliary Heartbreaker Scott Thurston.

And what a vision it is. “softCORE” is a jarring blast of melody and chaos that adds up to one of the year’s best and most exciting albums.

Though not without its missteps, “Her Loss” leaves the unshakable impression that Drake, in 2022, is doing what inspires him rather than pandering. One year removed from “Certified Lover Boy,” that represents a surprising and encouraging evolution.

A quarter century after the French quartet Phoenix formed, it hardly seems likely that they’d make the most fresh-sounding album since the one that lit up the alt-rock charts in 2009, “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” — but they’ve done it with “Alpha Zulu.” ... They’ve optimized and maximized their template in a way that seems effortless.

It all adds up to one of the best and most memorable albums of the year.

The set employs a “Get Back”-style approach to several of the songs, where listeners can hear the evolution of “Yellow Submarine” from a depressing lament to the familiar jaunty children’s anthem, that “And Your Bird Can Sing” once had a flagrant Byrds reference, and “Tomorrow Never Knows” was originally much slower — and even trippier. ... What’s really special here are the aforementioned book and especially the outtakes, many of which have eluded bootleggers over the half-century-plus since illicit Beatles releases began hitting the market.

The biggest stars here are indisputably Sara and Sean, winsome singers and master musicians on guitar and violin, respectively, and curators to beat the band. After 20 years bringing folks into their extended family, maybe these former kid prodigies have earned the right to be called mom and dad.

Bathed in brighter production values and upped tempos than on his usual amniotic-bath tones, the expanse of “Legend” allows the vocalist to do something he rarely does: play around and have a laugh.

“Midnights” doesn’t venture as far into other fields as some of her more openly ambitious albums have. This seems like a feature, not a flaw, even if “Folklore” and “Evermore” still feel like her masterpieces to date. The new album benefits from its relative modesty, length-wise and streamlining-wise. ... She’s able to maintain a tighter focus on alternately dark and light nights of the soul, in matters of love, redemption and minor vengeance.

The vast majority of tracks come in under three minutes, yet it’d be wrong to give credit to Baby for not overstaying his welcome on these songs when the record, aside from a predictable variation of keys or strings that introduce each new track, practically blurs into one indistinguishable song.

Healy has smartly introduced a measure of restraint, but it wouldn’t be a 1975 album without his idiosyncratic discursions; these songs, sturdy melodic creations at their core, are all the better for it.

It continues the group’s evolution with a powerful, more seasoned take on their earlier sounds.

The Royal Albert Hall show captures the band at the absolute peak of its powers. ... 52 years after the fact you can see, more than ever, what all the fuss was about.

To be clear, these are not professional recordings; they’re loose versions of the songs sung into a cheap recorder, and consist of Reed on lead vocals, acoustic guitar and harmonica while Cale sings harmony (lead on one song) and occasionally bangs on things; there are bum notes, laughter and mistakes. But in the Velvets canon, their historical significance is vast.

Noah doesn’t belt, and shows a sensitivity and vulnerability on these songs that belies her age. With 10 songs over just 33 minutes, it’s a wide-ranging, emotional ride that leaves the listener wanting more.

“Holy Fvck” is a good surprise and an even better record — maybe the best we’ve heard from Lovato to date.

For those of us who love both power pop and musical theater, though, and haven’t been as much enamored of their previous emo, this is Panic!’s best album. The paradox is that this may be one-man-band Urie’s hardest-rocking collection, as well as his most stagy.

She’s made a forward stride with a story of indignation and despondence like little else we’ve heard in hip-hop.

As a whole, is Dawes, on the album where all the members finally get to let their freak-flag fly a little more, or as much on record as they have live. And an album that’s kinda about dystopianism kinda becomes a nice 46-minute tonic for it.

Even in the album’s most vulnerable moments, maybe especially in those moments, Shires is proving what a tough character she really is, exploring territory that singer-songwriters a little less sure of themselves would fear to tread. ... If there’s any danger in letting both power and unguardedness fill her sails, well, she can take that like a catamaran.

“Renaissance” (volume one of three) is sticky, sweaty, hedonistic art — flanked by a pastiche of genres that never lingers on long enough for the listener to get too comfortable. It’s what makes the collection its own kind of masterpiece: beauty in the chaos.

Even within a semi-unplugged framework, White contains multitudes, packing in plenty of styles under one faintly folksy umbrella. One thing that immediately stands out is White’s wholly underrated knack for making great piano-based roots-rock recordings. ... The rub is gentler, but there’s no less reason to feel tickled.