He knew.

18 months of dealing with cancer, and rather than withdraw and rest – as he'd done before – David Bowie knuckled down made a record as intense and disturbing as anything he's done before. The Next Day was a worthy return to the fray but Blackstar... Even before we heard the terrible news, just taken on its own merits, Blackstar was something else. And now, knowing that he knew, it's absolutely fearsome in its confrontation with death.

Few would have predicted it back when they were gooning around in over-tight Adidas t-shirts, but with the benefit of hindsight it makes sense that Blur should have the most convincing longevity of the Britpop generation. Why? Because more than any of their contemporaries, and despite all the personality clashes and narcotic breakdowns, they were genuinely a band. Yes, Damon Albarn was the leader, but he never eclipsed the other three in the way that Jarvis or the Gallaghers did.

The story of Busted and McFly was a weird case of pop lightning striking twice. Busted, an early 2000s attempt to put together a boyband-with-guitars for girls who don't like boybands, was a huge success – not least because one of its members, James Bourne, proved to be an extraordinarily deft bubblegum pop-punk songwriter.

What Anne-Sophie Mutter is to the violin, Alison Balsom to the trumpet and Sabine Meyer to the clarinet, so is Sioned Williams to the harp. Though Meyer had the glass-ceiling distinction of being the first woman in the Berlin Philharmonic, Williams’s service to the BBC Symphony Orchestra has been longer (nearly 25 years so far as principal harp). And while all four artists have had major new works composed for them, the harpist’s commission of six pieces to celebrate her 60th birthday would seem to be a record.

Even before I stepped into the Royal Opera House, it was clear to see that it had been transformed for the opening performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole. A red carpet outside; the pervasive smell of popcorn within; the stage curtains, usually red, now a gaudy shade of purple: the opera house clearly had a case of All Things American.

Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti are a living lesson in the rejuvenating power of remaining experimental in art. Their music holds its own alongside the young guns of electronica, who indeed frequently idolise them, and in person they frequently seem as excited about possibilities and open to new ideas as artists just starting out.

John Adams: Harmonielehre, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Peter Oundjian (Chandos)

John Adams’ millennial conflagration of musical poems about childbirth, destruction and the divine made manifest not only served as a seasonal farewell and a transcendent epilogue to the Southbank’s year of 20^th-century music The Rest is Noise; it also stood pure and proud as a masterpiece.

Is David Bintley the one that got away, the wrong turning the Royal Ballet took in the early 1990s? I have long thought so, and watching their current triple bill, the feeling only grows. Bintley trained at the Royal Ballet School, graduated into Sadler’s Wells (now Birmingham Royal Ballet), and became house choreographer for the Royal in 1985.

I have to admit I was That Hipster with Underworld: loved them circa 1991, stopped being intensely interested around the first album, diverged almost completely after “Born Slippy” went supernova circa 1995.