A wise man once said: DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. It's a simple concept, but it seems so very hard to grasp, even – or especially – in a supposedly media-savvy world. The oddest thing of all is that it seems to be the people who consider themselves the most resistant to, or able to rise above, hype campaigns who have been caught up the most in the frenzy around this album.

Anything said about A won’t affect its sales. Guaranteed to sell millions, it’s the first album from ABBA’s former singer since 2004’s all-covers set, My Colouring Book. It’s also the first to contain original material since the one which preceded that, 1987’s I Stand Alone. In keeping with the privacy with which she leads her life, she’s not prolific. Fältskog’s return is newsworthy and welcome, so it’s deeply depressing that A is so feeble. Worse than that, her personality is hardly evident.

With a full-on commercial break in the middle of the programme and teary clips from the television show interspersed throughout, The Big Reunion live show really does play out like an extended episode of ITV2’s unlikely reality hit. Thankfully this means carrying over many of the things that made the TV show great, as well as giving late '90s/early '00s revivalists ample opportunity to purchase a £50 hoodie.

Rod Stewart has not exactly been inactive since he last wrote a decent tune towards the tail-end of the Seventies, but all that squiring and siring has left him little time to gaze navelwards in song. Since he started having fun with blondes, his best lines have been funnelled into seduction. So it's a bit of a turn-up that 20 years after he last recorded his own compositions, here comes Stewart’s most personal testament yet.

As detailed in his delightful autobiography there’s a lot of material to work through, including third-time-lucky nuptial bliss. It's moot whether the pleasures of late-blooming fidelity suit Stewart musically. The opening four-square stomp that is “She Makes Me Happy” may not make anyone else happy. Forty-plus years on from the libidinous "Maggie May", there's something icky about being summoned into a 68-year-old's bedroom in “Sexual Religion” and “Make Love to Me Tonight”. And a most unRodlike evangelical joy suffuses “Beautiful Morning” and “Finest Woman” (which sounds like the Faces on detox).

His soppier side finds a more natural channel in filial thoughts (“Can’t Stop Me Now”, rockily addressed to a doubting father) and the wise paternal counsel doled out in “Live the Life” and “Pure Love”. But the vintage DNA of the storytelling tunesmith is best looked for in a trio of heartbreak songs. The title track finds him trudging away from a failed marriage, while “It’s Over” sentimentally recalls one of his wedding days. Neither quite suppresses a nagging note of maudlin self-pity, but there's none of that in “Brighton Beach”, a tender lament for a teenage love affair consummated by the sea.

Stewart always knew how to let other songwriters speak for him, so it’s no criticism to say that the most impeccable song on Time is a cover. Tom Waits’s woozy “Picture in a Frame” (sung a couple of keys higher than Waits) seduces and compels. Not at all bad for an old fella.

Overleaf: Rod Stewart sings 'It's Over'

In six and a half years of existence, SBTV has redefined what youth culture broadcasting can be. It began as nothing more than a YouTube channel where Jamal Edwards would put up videos he had filmed of his favourite grime MCs – but his natural ambition and charm ensured it kept expanding from that base.

Sandie Shaw: Sandie/Me/Love Me Please Love Me

Paramore’s fourth album picks and chooses from so many genres that, first time around, I thought that I had accidentally begun to play it on shuffle. Its opening two tracks make an incongruous pairing: the seemingly light-hearted “Fast in My Car”, with its “we just want to have fun” refrain, and the gothy first single “Now”, which piles on the war metaphors.

Simple Minds: Celebrate – The Greatest Hits +

You really don't need the context on this, do you? Event album, comeback, cheesy title, blah blah – it's all there splattered all over the internet if you really want it. I'll just cut to the chase and say: I love Justin Timberlake's music, and I'm very, very relieved to say I love this album, for a number of reasons. And rather than try and analyse anything too much, I'll just list them.

The death today at age 82 of trumpeter Kenny Ball makes him the first of the big three chart regulars of Britain’s trad jazz boom to pass away. Both Acker Bilk and Chris Barber are still with us. It’s easily forgotten, but trad actually was bigger than The Beatles. In January 1963, just as the Liverpool quartet were issuing their second single, “Please Please Me”, Ball was on a sell-out bill at north London’s massive Alexandra Palace. Ball beat them to the US charts, hitting number two there in early 1962 with “Midnight in Moscow”.