It's easy to cherry-pick quick hits off iTunes, but what moved us most this year were the musical releases that were more than just the sum of their parts -- the albums that demanded to be heard in full, like Frank Ocean's genre-defying masterpiece
channel Orange, the cool sizzle of The xx returning to form on
Coexist, or the lyrical thrill of Kendrick Lamar living up to his hype in
good kid, m.A.A.d city. Check out the ten musical releases we wanted to hear top to bottom this year and drop your full-album favorites in the comments.
Above:
Frank Ocean's channel ORANGE
Nearly every single track on Frank Ocean's
channel ORANGE is fantastic, but the album would've made this list based on the track "Pyramids" alone. Nearly 10 minutes long, the pop opera starts in Cleopatra's Egypt and ends in a seedy motel but somehow manages to make turn an otherwise creepy love song into a profound statement about the treatment of women. Once queens, now sex workers, the females in Ocean's song hold incredible power – strength that makes the male voices narrating the track want to control them, even when they know they can't. Ocean, a unique voice in both his vocal style and musical complexity, made waves this summer when he revealed his previous
love for a man on Tumblr, but 2012 is almost over and while that bold move is still being discussed, the praise for
channel ORANGE is much louder.
– Angela Watercutter
