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The Best Hetrosexual Albums of 2012, and that Frank Ocean Album

Cameron Adams is a music writer for News Limited. He likes pugs, Collingwood and Avril Lavigne cover versions of Nickelback songs. Due to his employment in both the music and journalism sectors, he is contractually obliged to list his favourite albums of the year every December and publish them under the self-righteous headline of "Best albums and singles of 2012".

As tempting as it is, we're not going discuss any of those facts here. We're not even going to mention how he lists the Something For Kate record as his fourth favourite of the year, the criminal omission of Japandroids' Celebration Rock or even the fact he likens Flume to The Avalanches. Nope, all of that pales in significance compared to his short blurb about why he chose Frank Ocean's Channel Orange as his second favourite album of the year.

Frank Ocean's sexuality has nothing to do with any personal appreciation for Channel Orange as a creative piece of work. The content itself is clearly separated, as Frank rarely discusses the issue or even references it on the album. In fact, if you weren't subscribed to the RSS feed for his Tumblr, then there's a strong chance you'd have no idea which direction he swayed. And that's fine, because it shouldn't effect your lust or hatred of his music.

I'm also going to give Frank the benefit of the doubt and assume the revelation of his sexual preference in the week leading up to the release of Channel Orange's wasn't a publicity stunt. At most, we can take it as an interesting side-note that helps to contextualise the album, especially considering the current cusp situation of gay marriage etc. Yet it is no more significant in a discussion of the record's quality than mentioning the fact all members of The Temper Trap are left-handed.

Cameron, you had two sentences to write about why you love this album. One short paragraph to articulate exactly why you feel it was the second best album released in the entire world during this calendar year. And you choose to dedicate a large portion to the artist's sexual orientation? Further still, you decided to trivialise the issue further with what I assume is a Kate Perry reference?

I can hear you half-full glass gluggers now — "maybe he actually only wrote one sentence about Ocean's sexuality amidst a million-word article praising the artistic diversity of the album, before his editor and/or sub-editor brutally sliced it down?". Well, possibly, but all evidence obviously points towards there being no editors left at News Limited...

Imagine a world where that sentence made sense.

And while you're at it, imagine a completely different world where an artist's sexual preference has no bearing on how their album is judged. We are moving towards an inevitable age of sexual equality, yet surprisingly we still have idiots like Cameron Adams highlighting an artist's sexual orientation as if it's an important characteristic of their work.