This year, pop’s best albums came from strong women who had a lot to say: Lorde’s searing look at loneliness, Kesha’s raucous statement of liberation, Taylor Swift’s reckoning between her self and the version presented in the press. But pop’s wider world also offered a lot of pleasures from artists all over the spectrum – 20th century legends like Blondie and Tori Amos asserted their place in the new millennium, upstarts like Dua Lipa and Girl Ray established new rules, and One Direction refugees Harry Styles and Niall Horan set out on their own, building on the promise they’d shown in their X Factor days.