The results rate with his best work, by turns reflective and attacking, on which lyrics sparkle and music breathes and flows with a sure touch.

It is, in short, and as we might have expected, a work of genius.

This is a terrific album, full of dignity.

You Are Not Alone, her 2010 collaboration with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, won Staples her first Grammy. The follow up is even better.

Electric is the second really fantastic pop-dance blast of the year.

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

By re-recording the whole of Taylor Swift's 1989, the maverick alt country star has turned a world beating chart smash album into a tender masterpiece of bruised Americana, in the process emphasising the perfect songcraft and exposing the dark heart of emotion beating beneath Swift's gleaming surfaces.

At every turn he unfolds the fists of self-pity into upturned palms of generosity.

Springsteen drives proceedings with acoustic strumming, the rough tones of his voice rooting the symphonic gorgeousness in gritty reality. It stands comparison with his very best solo albums. Lyrics offer character sketches, lives caught with a few deft lines and evocative melodies.

Carnage is infused with profound and almost inescapable grief. But as this particularly audacious singer-songwriter grapples with isolation, loneliness, loss and the hard emotional graft of endurance, all set against a backdrop of apocalyptic threat, the personal becomes universal. Carnage may just be the greatest lockdown album yet.

The lyrics are fantastic, the grooves irresistible, the ideas constantly entertaining. His sense of fun is infectious. It’s good to have James Murphy back doing what he does best.

The most accessible album from Mike Hadreas (aka Perfume Genius) to date, without sacrificing any of his otherworldly strangeness and rich emotionalism. ... It is an album of vast depths that will reward a lot of listening.

Apple’s lyric writing is of the highest standard, even as it moves into the abstractions of her depression incantation Heavy Balloon (“I spread like strawberries/ I climb like peas and beans/ I’ve been sucking it in so long/ That I’m busting at the seams”). Her melodiousness holds together these strangely structured songs, whilst the boldness of her unusual arrangements forces you to adjust your ears and delve deeper into what she is trying to convey. ... This is an album that conveys one woman’s rage, vulnerability, confusion and wisdom in ways that we haven’t quite heard before.

It may not be the kind of definitive album statement that will rock the music world to its foundations but it more than demonstrate that the world’s greatest and longest serving rock band have still got what it takes.

The toughness of Weller's art remains fully present here. An album of beauty and depth, True Meanings is further affirmation of a particularly sincere and probing talent, for whom music is a vocation rather than a career.

Lemonade is by far Beyoncé’s strongest album.

On Over and Even, which was produced by Daniel Martin Moore, she also sings harmony with Will Oldham and Glen Dettinger and allied to riveting guitar work, as it is on My Only Trouble, the result is terrific.

Happily, the words are wonderful and Something More Than Free is an album that grows and grows on you. Producer Dave Cobb is in fine action again and gets the best from the settings behind Isbell's effecting voice. Some of the songs are simply splendid.

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.

Hoodies All Summer is the album that grime has been crying out for, an audacious state-of-the-nation address from one of its most articulate lyricists.

The Gouster [is] raised from the archives as the centre piece of a handsome new 12-CD box set, Who Can I Be Now? (1974-76). ... Finally given its moment in the light, The Gouster is unlikely to become a belated part of the canon, but it is nevertheless a welcome testament to the real heart beating at the centre of Bowie’s pop genius.

There’s a directness, freshness and intimacy to these performances that puts the late, great Beatle George right in your ear, untarnished by time. Not all things must pass, it seems.

You suspect that getting on the wrong side of White would be inadvisable. Thankfully, he has channelled his demons in Lazaretto to create one of the great break-up albums of recent years.

Prine is extraordinary, one of the most eloquent artists of modern times and seeing where it all started, in this super CD, really is something very special.

Bloodsports is bleeding good.

This is an album that sounds like a world of music in itself.

Leonard Cohen’s 14th studio album is a bleak masterpiece for hard times from pop’s longest-serving poet.

Channel Orange is as dazzling as it is baffling, rarely staying still long enough to get a grip on.