IG2EUS: Concept Albums

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of concept albums:

Concept albums are albums that are centered around a single unifying concept, be it sex, drugs, or rock and roll. The term is a unification of two words: "Concept," meaning that the songs have a common theme, and "album," meaning a collection of songs recorded by one band in one place and at one time.

The concept of concept albums has been around since the 1950s but the crossover to rock music was first attempted in 1967 by Paul McCartney of the Beatles. The attempt was, frankly, less than sucessful, but that's not to say that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is not a freaking good album. It is. It is in fact one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, and though rock fans can be morons at time, the collective idiocy required to buy more than 30 million copies of a less-than-stellar recording would be too great for any civilization to actually survive this long. The fact of the matter is, however, that there are more songs on Back in Black that have to do with the death of Bon Scott than there are on Sgt. Pepper that have to do with the Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The other common example of the quintessential concept album is Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, an example that is equally flawed for opposite reasons. There are in fact two concepts on this album. Side one deals with life, while side two deals with isolation and madness. Where The Dark Side of the Moon falls apart is on the "album" side of the equation, and it is therefore unique among non-rock-opera concept albums for having extended instrumental passages that are not parts of actual songs.

Pink Floyd built on this, er, concept, though, and in 1975 they unleashed Wish You Were Here, which is not only a perfect example of a concept album, but arguably also a perfect example of Pink Floyd at their finest (if you can sit through the 8-and-a-half-minute instrumental passage before the first word is sung). The album might as well have been called The Rise and Fall of Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett, because that is precisely what it is about. Unlike The Dark Side of the Moon, there is only one unifying theme instead of two, and all of the different "tracks" on it are actual songs instead of a mix of songs and separate instrumental passages. They did it again in 1977 with Animals before creating one of the quintessential rock operas, The Wall.

A rock opera is a concept album that leans far too heavily on the "concept" side of the equation. These albums tell a story through their songs, at least in theory. In actual practice, the listener tends to get a small number of awesome songs, while the plot is actually described in 1-minute breaks between the songs. Every rock opera ever is guilty of this. Also every rock opera of any importance involves a rebirth of fascism.