Interest in Britney Spears has not waned. The #FreeBritney movement, the new documentary Framing Britney Spears, and the ongoing controversy around her father’s legal conservatorship have served to put her back in the public eye over the last year. Not that she ever drifted very far away from it.

“That cat’s a blues singer,” Frank Sinatra famously said of Willie Nelson. “He can sing my stuff but I don’t know if I can sing his.” The two men sang together, on stage and on record, and Nelson, 87, is now older than Sinatra when he took his final bow – the Guv'nor last sang in public aged 79, and died at 82. The perfect phrasing which had marked him out had by then long gone, swagger and vulgarity replacing once intelligent and subtle performances. "I learned a lot about phrasing listening to Frank," Nelson has said.

Theartsdesk is a labour of love. Bloody-mindedly run as a co-operative of journalists from the beginning, our obsession with maintaining a daily-updated platform for good culture writing has caused a good few grey and lost hairs over the years. But it has also been rewarding – and looking back over the 10 years of Disc of the Day reviews has been a good chance to remind ourselves of that. 

The tears of a clown is a familiar enough metaphor – a cliché, perhaps – and as an image it adorns the sleeve of the latest album by Mike Rosenberg, better known as Passenger, the platinum-selling former Brighton busker. Scheduled originally for release last May, Songs for the Drunk and Broken Hearted is his twelfth solo album and it was partially rewritten in lockdown, the tears for a relationship that ended just before.

Frank Marshall might not be the biggest household name, but his footprint on Hollywood is unrivalled. He has produced hits ranging from Indiana Jones and Back to the Future to Jason Bourne and Jurassic World. He also takes occasional forays into directing, such as the madcap Arachnophobia and cannibalistic rugby tale Alive.

Singer/pianist/songwriter/entertainer Joe Stilgoe responded remarkably rapidly to the new circumstances of March 2020. Even before the first nationwide lockdown was declared, he had started doing a series of daily performances on YouTube: “Stilgoe In The Shed”.

Apparently a freaky, brilliant novelty in 1974, Sparks have proved eternally invincible: the synthpop duo template, glam and disco avatars, chasing the pop grail across the globe as their latest mode hit the local chart mark. Lightly worn resilience and diligent application underpin their endurance (Russell Mael told me 20 years ago that he felt a professional responsibility to remain a good-looking singer).

It’s 35 years since the original and best loved line up of X last released any new material: the less than special Ain’t Love Grand. Somewhat unexpectedly then, a new album, Alphabetland has appeared out of the ether and it’s certainly up there with the band’s spectacular, first four discs.

Glorious Joan is back! Eleven years after her first covers album, with that very cheeky artwork, comes Joan Wasser’s celebration of "songs I adore" – 10 tunes that she’s been working on ever since 2009.

What times. They cancelled Glastonbury. Festival season 2020 disappeared. Then certain potions and compounds associated with festivaling ran dry. Well, the latter exist, of course. There’s a fellow over the road who’s still selling talcum powder and stinking chemo-skunk from his porch.