{{Short description|Album that uses its tracks to tell a self-contained story}}{{about|the topic of concept albums|albums named "Concept"|Concept (disambiguation)}}{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2022}}File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1990-0722-401, Berlin, AuffÃ¼hrung der Rockoper "The Wall".jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|alt=A concert stage in front of a wall with 2 levels. Five men stand on a balcony, including Roger Waters, who is saluting with his arm and is lit by a spotlight. On the lower level is a drum kit and a man playing guitar.|Roger Waters (saluting on top) leading a live performance of Pink Floyd's The Wall The WallA concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually.{{sfn|Cullen|2001|p=98}}{{sfn|Elicker|2001|pp=227â€“229}} This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical.{{sfn|Shuker|2012|p=5}} Sometimes the term is applied to albums considered to be of "uniform excellence" rather than an LP with an explicit musical or lyrical motif.{{sfn|Jones|2008|p=49}} There is no consensus among music critics as to the specific criteria for what a "concept album" is.{{sfn|Elicker|2001|pp=227â€“229}}The format originates with folk singer Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) and was subsequently popularized by traditional pop singer Frank Sinatra's 1940sâ€“50s string of albums, although the term is more often associated with rock music.BOOK, Luhrssen, David,weblink Encyclopedia of Classic Rock, Larson, Michael, 2017-02-24, ABC-CLIO, 978-1-4408-3514-8, en, In the 1960s several well-regarded concept albums were released by various rock bands, which eventually led to the invention of progressive rock and rock opera.
Definitions
There is no clear definition of a "concept album".{{sfn|Elicker|2001|p=227}} Fiona Sturges of The Independent stated that the concept album "was originally defined as a long-player where the songs were based on one dramatic idea â€“ but the term is subjective." A precursor to this type of album can be found in the 19th-century song cycle,WEB, Cucchiara, Romina, The Concept Album As a Performative Genre,weblink PopMatters, 10 November 2014, which ran into similar difficulties in classification.{{sfn|Elicker|2001|p=228}} The extremely broad definitions of a "concept album" could potentially encompass all soundtracks, compilations, cast recordings, greatest hits albums, tribute albums, Christmas albums, and live albums.{{sfn|Elicker|2001|p=228}}The most common definitions refer to an expanded approach to a rock album (as a story, play, or opus), or a project that either revolves around a specific theme or a collection of related materials.{{sfn|Elicker|2001|p=228}} AllMusic writes, "A concept album could be a collection of songs by an individual songwriter or a particular theme â€“ these are the concept LPs that reigned in the '50s ... the phrase 'concept album' is inextricably tied to the late 1960s, when rock & rollers began stretching the limits of their art form."WEB,weblink AllMusic Loves Concept Albums, AllMusic, 10 February 2014, 25 April 2016, Author Jim Cullen describes it as "a collection of discrete but thematically unified songs whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts ... sometimes [erroneously] assumed to be a product of the rock era."{{sfn|Cullen|2001|p=98}} Author Roy Shuker defines concept albums and rock operas as albums that are "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical. ... In this form, the album changed from a collection of heterogeneous songs into a narrative work with a single theme, in which individual songs segue into one another."{{sfn|Shuker|2012|p=5}}Speaking of concepts in albums during the 1970s, Robert Christgau wrote in (Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies) (1981), because "overall impression" of an album matters, "concept intensifies the impact" of certain albums "in more or less the way Sgt. Pepper intended", as well as "a species of concept that pushes a rhythmically unrelenting album like The Wild Magnolias or a vocally irresistible one like Shirley Brown's Woman to Woman, to a deeper level of significance."BOOK, Christgau, Robert, Robert Christgau, 1981, (Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies), Ticknor & Fields, 0899190251, The Criteria,weblink robertchristgau.com, 6 April 2019,
History
{{See also|Album era}}
1940sâ€“50s: Origins
In the 2016 BBC documentary When Pop Went Epic: The Crazy World of the Concept Album, narrated by Rick Wakeman, it is suggested that the first concept album is Woody Guthrie's 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads.AV MEDIA, When Pop Went Epic: The Crazy World of the Concept Album, BBC documentary, 6 May 2016, Rick Wakeman (narrator), The Independent regards it as "perhaps" one of the first concept albums, consisting exclusively of semi-autobiographical songs about the hardships of American migrant labourers during the 1930s.NEWS, The return of concept album,weblink 16 November 2012, The Independent, 2 October 2009, In the late 1940s, the LP record was introduced, with space age pop composers producing concept albums soon after. Themes included exploring wild life and dealing with emotions, with some albums meant to be played while dining or relaxing. This was accompanied in the mid 1950s with the invention of the gatefold, which allowed room for liner notes to explain the concept.{{sfn|McKnight-Trontz|1999|p=10}}File:Frank Sinatra (1956-01-16, Studio A, with cup).jpg|thumb|left|Frank Sinatra in Capitol Records Studio A, 1956, during the recording of his album Songs for Swingin' Lovers!Songs for Swingin' Lovers!Singer Frank Sinatra recorded several concept albums prior to the 1960s rock era, including In the Wee Small Hours (1955)JOURNAL, Black, Johnny, 5 March 1991, A-may-zing, Q Magazine, 55, 33, and Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958).{{sfn|Cullen|2001|p=98}} Sinatra is occasionally credited as the inventor of the concept album,{{sfn|Rojek|2004}} beginning with The Voice of Frank Sinatra (1946), which led to similar work by Bing Crosby. According to biographer Will Friedwald, Sinatra "sequenced the songs so that the lyrics created a flow from track to track, affording an impression of a narrative, as in musical comedy or opera. ... [He was the] first pop singer to bring a consciously artistic attitude to recording."{{sfn|Friedwald|1995|}}{{refn|group=nb|In the late 1940s, boogie-woogie and stride pianist Pete Johnson recorded an early concept album, House Rent Party (1946), in which he starts out playing alone, supposedly in a new empty house, and is joined there by other players. Each has a solo single backed by Johnson, and then the whole group plays a jam session together.Silvester, Peter, A Left Hand Like God, A Study of Boogie-Woogie, pp. 98-99}}Singer/pianist Nat "King" Cole (who, along with Sinatra, often collaborated with arranger Nelson Riddle during this era) was also an early pioneer of concept albums,"Cole developed the art of the concept album, a song collection consciously built on a single theme..." John Swenson (1999). The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide, University of California Press, {{ISBN|9780679768739}}, p. 1957 as with his Wild Is Love (1960), a suite of original songs about a man's search for love.Will Friedwald (2020). Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole, Oxford University Press, {{ISBN|9780190882051}}, p. 305
1960s: Rock and country music
In the early 1960s, concept albums began featuring highly in American country music, but the fact went largely unacknowledged by rock/pop fans and critics, who would only begin noting "concept albums" as a phenomenon later in the decade,{{sfn|Elicker|2001|p=234}} when albums became closely aligned with countercultural ideology, resulting in a recognised "album era" and the introduction of the rock concept album.{{sfn|Danesi|2017|p=15}} The author Carys Wyn Jones writes that the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (1966), the Beatles' Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), and the Who's Tommy (1969) are variously cited as "the first concept album", usually for their "uniform excellence rather than some lyrical theme or underlying musical motif".{{sfn|Jones|2008|p=44}}Other records have been claimed as "early" or "first" concept albums. The Beach Boys' first six albums, released over 1962â€“64, featured collections of songs unified respectively by a central concept, such as cars, surfing, and teenage lifestyles.AV MEDIA NOTES, Little Deuce Coupe / All Summer Long, The Beach Boys, 1990, David, Leaf, David Leaf, Capitol Records, CD Liner,weblink Writing in 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, Chris Smith commented: "Though albums such as Frank Sinatra's 1955 In the Wee Small Hours and Marty Robbins' 1959 Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs had already introduced concept albums, [the Beach Boys' 1963 album] Little Deuce Coupe was the first to comprise almost all original material rather than standard covers."{{sfn|Smith|2009|p=xix}} Music historian Larry Starr, who identifies the Beach Boys' 1964 releases Shut Down Volume 2 and All Summer Long as heralding the album era, cites Pet Sounds as the first rock concept album on the basis that it had been "conceived as an integrated whole, with interrelated songs arranged in a deliberate sequence."{{sfn|Starr|2007|pp=253â€“254, 265}}The 100 Greatest Bands of All Time (2015) states that the Ventures "pioneered the idea of the rock concept album years before the genre is generally acknowledged to have been born".{{sfn|Moskowitz|2015|p=689}} Writing in his Concise Dictionary of Popular Culture, Marcel Danesi identifies the Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965) and the Who's The Who Sell Out (1967) as other examples of early concept albums.{{sfn|Danesi|2017|p=72}} Brian Boyd of The Irish Times names the Kinks' Face to Face (1966) as the first concept album: "Written entirely by Ray Davies, the songs were supposed to be linked by pieces of music, so that the album would play without gaps, but the record company baulked at such radicalism. It's not one of the band's finest works, but it did have an impact."NEWS, Boyd, Brian, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys: 12 months that changed music,weblink The Irish Times, 4 June 2016, "Popular consensus" for the first rock concept album, according to AllMusic, favours Sgt. Pepper. According to music critic Tim Riley, "Strictly speaking, the Mothers of Invention's Freak Out! [1966] has claims as the first 'concept album', but Sgt. Pepper was the record that made that idea convincing to most ears."{{sfn|Riley|1988|p=11}}{{refn|group=nb|Frank Zappa said that within Freak Out!, "It wasn't as if we had a hit single and we needed to build some filler around it. Each tune had a function."{{sfn|Zappa|Occhiogrosso|1989|pp=65â€“80}} The Beatles' John Lennon commented: "Sgt. Pepper is called the first concept album, but it doesn't go anywhere ... it works because we said it worked."{{sfn|Sheff|1981|p=197}} }} Musicologist Allan Moore says that "Even though previous albums had set a unified mood (notably Sinatra's Songs for Swinging Lovers), it was on the basis of the influence of Sgt. Pepper that the penchant for the concept album was born."{{sfn|Moore|2016}}{{refn|group=nb|He continues that: "Things might have looked different had Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys managed to complete the album Smile at the time. ... it would have suggested an entirely different possible line of development for the concept album, wherein parts of tracks reappeared in others producing a form frankly far more sophisticated than any of its contemporaries."{{sfn|Moore|2016}}}} Adding to Sgt. Pepper{{'}}s claim, the artwork reinforced its central theme by depicting the four Beatles in uniform as members of the Sgt. Pepper band, while the record omitted the gaps that usually separated album tracks.MAGAZINE, Johnny, Black, Concept Albums: A-may-zing!, Q (magazine), Q, April 1991, Available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required). Music critic and journalist Neil Slaven stated that Frank Zappa's Absolutely Free, released the same day as Sgt. Pepper, was "very much a concept album, but The Beatles effortlessly stole his thunder", and subsequently Sgt. Pepper was hailed as "perhaps the first 'concept album' even though the songs were unrelated."BOOK, Slaven, Neil, Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story Of Frank Zappa, Omnibus Press, 2009, 978-0-85712-043-4,
1960sâ€“70s: Rock operas and progressive rock
{{see also|Progressive soul}}File:Genesis live 1974-11-20.jpg|thumb|right|Genesis recreating their concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974) for a live performance. Band member Peter Gabriel Peter GabrielAuthor Bill Martin relates the assumed concept albums of the 1960s to progressive rock:{{blockquote|In discussions of progressive rock, the idea of the "concept album" is mentioned frequently. If this term refers to albums that have thematic unity and development throughout, then in reality there are probably fewer concept albums than one might first think. Pet Sounds and Sergeant Pepper's do not qualify according to this criterion ... However, if we instead stretch the definition a bit, to where the album is the concept, then it is clear that progressive rock is entirely a music of concept albumsâ€”and this flows rather directly of Rubber Soul (December 1965) and then Revolver (1966), Pet Sounds, and Sergeant Pepper's. ... in the wake of these albums, many rock musicians took up "the complete album approach."{{sfn|Martin|2015|p=41}} }}Popmatters{{'}} Sarah Zupko notes that while the Who's Tommy is "popularly thought of as the first rock opera, an extra-long concept album with characters, a consistent storyline, and a slight bit of pomposity", it is preceded by the shorter concept albums Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake (Small Faces, 1968) and S.F. Sorrow (The Pretty Things, 1968).MAGAZINE, Sarah, Zupko,weblink The Pretty Things: S.F. Sorrow, PopMatters, 18 January 2009, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20080623190644weblink">weblink 23 June 2008, Author Jim Cullen states: "The concept album reached its apogee in the 1970s in ambitious records like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and the Eagles' Hotel California (1976)."{{sfn|Cullen|2001|p=98}} In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked Dark Side of the Moon at number one among the 50 greatest progressive rock albums of all time, also noting the LP's stature as the second-best-selling album of all time.MAGAZINE, 50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time,weblink Rolling Stone, 17 June 2015, Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), a semi-autobiographical story modeled after the band's Roger Waters and Syd Barrett, is one of the most famous concept albums by any artist.WEB, Barker, Emily, 23 of the Maddest And Most Memorable Concept Albums,weblink NME, 23 January 2017, 8 July 2015, In addition to The Wall, Danesi highlights Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974) and Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage (1979) as other culturally significant concept albums.{{sfn|Danesi|2017|p=72}}According to author Edward Macan, concept albums as a recurrent theme in progressive rock was directly inspired by the counterculture associated with "the proto-progressive bands of the 1960s", observing: "the consistent use of lengthy forms such as the programmatic song cycle of the concept album and the multimovement suite underscores the hippies' new, drug-induced conception of time."{{sfn|Macan|1997|p=13}} Progressive soul musicians inspired by this approach conceived concept albums during this era reflecting themes and concerns of the African-American experience, including Marvin Gaye (1971's What's Going On) and George Clinton (the 1975 Parliament album Mothership Connection and Dope Dogs).JOURNAL, Keister, Jay, Black Prog: Soul, Funk, Intellect and the Progressive Side of Black Music of the 1970s, American Music Research Center Journal, 28, 2019,weblink weblink 2020-11-24, live, colorado.edu, 29 January 2021, 5â€“22, NEWS, Amadour, December 16, 2022, 15 Minutes with George Clinton,weblink Lamag - Culture, Food, Fashion, News & Los Angeles,
1980sâ€“present: Decline and return to popularity
With the emergence of MTV as a music video network which valued singles over albums, concept albums became less dominant in the 1980s.{{sfn|Cullen|2001|p=98}} Some artists, however, still released concept albums and experienced success in the 1990s and 2000s. NME{{'}}s Emily Barker cites Green Day's American Idiot (2004) as one of the "more notable" examples, having brought the concept album back to high-charting positions.WEB, The Top 10 Concept Albums of All Time,weblink Guitar World, 26 October 2015, 27 January 2017,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20170802113546weblink">weblink 2 August 2017, dead, My Chemical Romanceâ€™s The Black Parade (2006) is another example of a modern concept album. Dorian Lynskey, writing for GQ, noted a resurgence of concept albums in the 2010s due to streaming: "This is happening not in spite of the rise of streaming and playlists, but because of it. Threatened with redundancy in the digital era, albums have fought back by becoming more album-like." Cucchiara argues that "concept albums" should also describe "this new generation of concept albums, for one key reason. This is because the unison between the songs on a particular album has now been expanded into a broader field of visual and artistic design and marketing strategies that play into the themes and stories that form the album."In the 21st century, the field of classical music has adopted the idea of the "concept album", citing such historical examples as Schubert's Winterreise and Schumann's Liederkreis as prototypes for contemporary composers and musicians.{{sfn|Shuker|2017|p=10}} Classical composers and performers increasingly adopt production and marketing strategies that unify otherwise disparate works into concept albums or concerts.JOURNAL, Bennett, Dawn and Diana Blom, Pinching (or taking back) ideas from popular music: Placing the concept album in contemporary classical music,weblink Academia.edu, 11 December 2019, The classical music magazine Gramophone includes a special category for "concept album" in its annual "Recordings of the Year Awards", to celebrate "albums where a creative mind has curated something visionary, a programme whose whole speaks more powerfully than its parts. A thought-through journey, which compels to be heard in one sitting."WEB, Cullingford, Martin, Concept Album,weblink Gramophone, 11 December 2019, {{third-party inline|date=March 2020}}In a year-ending essay on the album in 2019, Ann Powers wrote for Slate that the year found the medium in a state of flux. In her observation, many recording artists revitalized the concept album around autobiographical narratives and personal themes, such as intimacy, intersectionality, African-American life, boundaries among women, and grief associated with death. She cited such albums as Brittany Howard's Jaime, Raphael Saadiq's Jimmy Lee, Jamila Woods' Legacy! Legacy!, Rapsody's Eve, Jenny Lewis' On the Line, Julia Jacklin's Crushing, Joe Henry's The Gospel According to Water, and Nick Cave's Ghosteen.MAGAZINE, Powers, Ann, Ann Powers, 17 December 2019,weblink The album is evolving., Slate (magazine), Slate, 15 September 2020,
See also

List of concept albums
Visual album

Notes
{{reflist|group=nb}} Although concept albums have only been popularized and somewhat defined recently, the concept has existed far longer than rock. For example, Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons', and Camille Saint-SaÃ«ns 'Le Carnaval des Animaux' (The Carnival of the Animals) are built upon the same idea of an overarching theme or concept, though they are not traditionally thought of as albums.
References
{{Reflist}}
Bibliography

BOOK,weblink Restless in the Promised Land, Jim, Cullen, Rowman & Littlefield, 978-1-58051-093-6, 2001,
BOOK,weblink Concise Dictionary of Popular Culture, Marcel, Danesi, Rowman & Littlefield, 978-1-4422-5312-4, 2017,
BOOK, Elicker, Martina, Word and Music Studies: Essays on the Song Cycle and on Defining the Field,weblink 2001, Rodopi, 90-420-1565-9, Concept Albums: Song Cycles in Popular Music,
BOOK, Friedwald, Will, Sinatra! the Song is You: A Singer's Art, 1995, Simon and Schuster, 9780684193687,weblink
BOOK, Jones, Carys Wyn, The Rock Canon, 2008, Ashgate, 978-0-7546-6244-0, {{google books, y, rdC3n62ArX8C, }}
BOOK, Macan, Edward, Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture,weblink registration, 1997, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-509887-7,
BOOK, Martin, Bill, Bill Martin (philosophy), Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock, 1968-1978,weblink 2015, Open Court Publishing Company, 978-0-8126-9944-9,
BOOK, McKnight-Trontz, Jennifer, Exotiquarium: Album Art from the Space Age,weblink 1999, St. Martin's Press, 978-0-312-20133-3,
BOOK, Moore, Allan F., Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song,weblink 2016, Routledge, 978-1-317-05265-4,
BOOK, Moskowitz, David V., The 100 Greatest Bands of All Time: A Guide to the Legends Who Rocked the World &91;2 volumes&93;: A Guide to the Legends Who Rocked the World,weblink 2015, ABC-CLIO, 978-1-4408-0340-6,
BOOK, Riley, Tim, Tim Riley (music critic), Tell Me Why: The Beatles: Album By Album, Song By Song, The Sixties And After, 1988, Alfred A. Knopf, {{google books, y, JXn8AgAAQBAJ, |isbn=978-0-394-55061-9}}
BOOK, Rojek, Chris, Frank Sinatra, 2004, Polity, 9780745630908,weblink
BOOK, Sheff, David, David Sheff, Golson, G. Barry, 1981, 2000, All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, St Martin's Griffin, 978-0-312-25464-3, {{google books, y, HL7X-YyrINUC, }}
BOOK, Shuker, Roy, Popular Music Culture: The Key Concepts,weblink 2012, Routledge, 978-1-136-57771-0,
BOOK, Shuker, Roy, Popular Music: The Key Concepts, 2017, Routledge, London, 978-1138680920,
BOOK, Smith, Chris, 101 Albums that Changed Popular Music,weblink 2009, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-537371-4,
BOOK, Starr, Larry, Larry Starr, American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3, 2007, Oxford University Press, New York, 9780195300536, 2nd,weblink registration, 2006,
BOOK, Zappa, Frank, Occhiogrosso, Peter, The real Frank Zappa book, 1989, Poseidon Press, New York, 0-671-70572-5,

Further reading

BOOK, Shute, Gareth, Concept Albums,weblink 2015, Investigations Publishing, 978-1-517-28755-9,
BOOK, Tunbridge, Laura, Laura Tunbridge, The Song Cycle,weblink 2010, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-89644-3,

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