SOMETIMES it's all too easy to forget that Britney Spears is the foremost female recording artist of her generation.

Since 'Baby One More Time' made the then 17-year-old an overnight success her recording career has seen significant peaks and many personal troughs.

But in each of the four previous Britney albums, there have been at least two or three amazing pop songs while the rest could do with a buzz cut or at least a blade two.

What is most recognisable about Blackout - her 'comeback' album (a paradox considering she has reverted to a more hands-off role in the songwriting) is that it sounds so far from the tabloid images we've been fed in recent months. This means that either a) the producers/writers are responsible for the whole bloody thing; b) most of it was written before the haircut/parenting/relationship/eating/not eating issues; or c) Britney is, not unlike Madonna, an innovative dancepop artist destined to become the voice of her generation.

Forget that she is credited with co-writing only two songs, it doesn't bother Amy Winehouse, Madonna or even Michael Jackson (whose best work, including 'Thriller', was written by a man from Lincolnshire).

First thing I wanted to hear was whether there was any riposte to the media which seems to get blamed for everything these days. And there is but it doesn't really say anything other than, like, everyone wants a piece of her and, like, it really sucks. But I guess it must.

No, Blackout works best on songs like 'Freakshow' which is a great disco track that, elusive lyrics and delicious paranoid production aside, may or may not have any relevance to anything. It doesn't matter because it's a great song. Ditto 'Radar' and most of the album.

At this stage of her career Madonna, who like Britney has no real vocal instrument to speak of, had released Like a Prayer, True Blue, Like A Virgin, having sold around 60m albums. Britney, in a market of freefalling CD sales, has sold closer to 80m already and Blackout will undoubtedly take her past the 100m mark. The best bit is, like a Justin Timberlake album, it may well keep both junior and yourself happy in the car.

Download this: 'Piece Of Me', 'Radar', 'Freakshow' Rock David Byrne Live From Austin TX New West (68m 30s) . . .

IF YOU'VE not bought one of David Byrne's nearly 20 albums post Talking Heads you may be forgiven for thinking he was doing a bit of a Sting and had gone native. Well, he did a bit but not so long ago he left the Latino albums behind and recorded some funky, pop records.

This is his first live album, which has been widely bootlegged, recorded on the 2001 Look Into The Eyeball tour complete with a couple of Talking Heads gems. The coup de grace, however, is a cover of Whitney Houston's 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody'. Seriously.

Download: 'God's Child', 'Once In A Lifetime', 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' Neil Dunphy Stereophonics Pull The Pin V2 (46m 23s) . .LAST year's Dakota album unbeliveably kept the Stereophonics relevant thanks to a couple of singles. The rest of the album was a dog. Now they're at it again. At what? Who knows? Six albums in and I still haven't a clue what this band are actually for.

They're a bit like Middlesborough football club: a good cup run once saw them headline Slane. This is standard fare from the three-piece: songs that seem to be about the smoking ban, drunkeness and elusive relationshiops Kelly Jones may have had somewhere sometime. Like, so what?

Download: 'Pass The Buck' It Means Nothing' 'Soldiers Make Good Targets' ND David Gray Greatest Hits RMG (59m 42s) . . .

THE key to successful M.O.R. music is building it so it straddles a versatile line of being listenable throughout break ups and also throughout making out on the couch with the person you haven't broken up with yet. At this, David Gray is the master. Every note is tinged with sadness. It's pensive, drawn-out stuff and occasionally rather deep. His popularity here is astounding. The album White Ladder is the biggest ever selling album in Ireland. So you'd wonder why a Greatest Hits is needed considering everyone already owns all the David Gray they need. Oh yeah, Christmas. Download:

'Babylon', 'Please Forgive Me', 'This Ye a r 's L o v e ' Una Mullally Holy F*** LP (36:54) XL . . . .

HOLY F*** create invigorating and astoundingly modern music with their bare hands. And by bare hands, I mean they refuse to use most digital technology associated with making the dance or, at least, danceable music they make.

Everything is in here; experimental indie, post punk, no wave, hip hop, flash back electronics deconstructed and rebuilt into a bastardised version of the originals.

'Lovely Allen' is one of the best tracks this year. It's kind of like math rock with the chin stroking swapped for goofy dancing.

Brilliant.

Download: 'Lovely Allen', 'Milkshake', 'Choppers', 'Royal Gregory' UM Jazz Roberto Fonseca Zamazu Enja Records . . . . .

CUBAN pianist Roberto Fonseca has it all . . . talent, charm, good looks and a leather hat . . . and don't be surprised if he proceeds to sweep the globe, much as his erstwhile employers the BuenaVista Social Club did a few years ago.

But Fonseca is no revivalist act. The Cuban inflections are there, and he is well schooled in the musical traditions of his musically fertile home, but Fonseca is a jazz musician from the top drawer, with the technique, the sensibility and the passion to become one of the genre's leading voices.

Cormac Larkin Classical Staatskapelle Weimar/Arthur Fagen Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies Naxos (67m 53s) . .RETURNING after 16 years away from his homeland, Liszt finally found time to explore the gypsy music of his native Hungary, composing derivations of some of the transcriptions he took from such musicians. Between 1839 and 1847, Liszt wrote a series of piano pieces, which form the core inspiration for the 15 Hungarian Dances. Fagen does little to embellish the stylistic norms of the dances in this recording, though each one ambles along with a certain charm and sense of individuality.

Much of the virtuosic clarity required of the style, however, is muddied both in ensemble and engineering. Karen Dervan