Hinds offers joyous summer listening as Dion’s voice is as strong as ever

While Ariana Grande pioneers a new trap-based pop sound, Lady Gaga has been, along with producer BloodPop, digging deep into the past, with Chromatica’s signature texture being house beats so 90s they would make Bobby Brown blush.

It’s a mark of the calibre of Gaga’s songwriting that if this were the work of a new artist, this would be one of the most promising albums of the year, but for Gaga, tunes like Stupid Love and Rain On Me (featuring the aforementioned Grande) are all in a day’s work.

Her Little Monsters will welcome easily the campest Gaga album for a long time, with the Vogue pastiche Babylon serving up an atrocious “babble on” pun that shows she is not taking herself too seriously.

It might not be too extravagant a prediction that Sine From Above — a curiosity which features no fewer than 12 songwriting credits — will be the only song Elton John will be appearing on this year that features a jungle breakdown. (Review by Rachel Farrow)

7/10

Uptown Number 7 featuring Brian Setzer of Stray Cats is a gospel song set on a train while Can’t Start Over Again slows it right down, Dion’s worldweary lament accompanied by Jeff Beck.

John Hammond Jr provides harmonica on My Baby Loves To Boogie, Morrison adds vocals to Got Nothing and when Patti Scialfa sang on Hymn To Her, the album closer, Springsteen, her husband, showed up and asked to play a solo.

It covers all types of blues but the standout is Song For Sam Cooke (Here in America), inspired by playing in Memphis with the King of Soul in 1962 at the height of the civil rights movement. The lyrics about segregation and discrimination “here in America” hit hard in a song released as America burns again over injustice. (Review by Matthew George)

7/10

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