Storytelling Through Music: The Art of the Concept Album
- Chiara Guastella
- Jul 31
- 11 min read
Updated: Aug 2
Not all albums are just a collection of songs: some are blueprints, confessionals, or entire universes woven together by a single theme. An art form that nowadays seems lost to many, the concept album is meant to be listened to from start to finish, with the intention of transporting its listener to a world that sometimes reflects the artist's upbringing and backstory. At other times, a concept album brings listeners to a different world entirely. It provides a sense of authorship and inventiveness that goes beyond a typical thirteen-track album. It serves, especially in today's musical landscape, as a reminder that the creation of an album in all its facets is first and foremost an art form that is not only made up of sounds and words, but the stories behind it are what reinforce the authenticity of the musician's pen.
Despite being made popular in the '70s through Pink Floyd's monumental Dark Side of the Moon, that was only the bloom of a seed that was planted throughout the '50s and '60s. Frank Sinatra laid the groundwork with his 1955 album In the Wee Small Hours, which began to explore the concept of a cohesive, mood-driven album, with themes of heartbreak, loneliness, and late-night melancholy. Eleven years later, The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which, despite being heavily debated on its status as a concept album, is considered a musical milestone nonetheless. It reinvented the album as a unified artistic statement, where The Beatles took the role of an entirely fictional band (the title of the album), to be able to make music without being under the pressure of The Beatles' authorship, and therefore explore different sounds and styles.
The 'concept' of the album's creation is mostly theatrical and focused on presentation, with clapping and cheering sounds as a transition between songs, framing it like a Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band live album. Unfortunately, the overarching concept of the "fake band" gets lost before "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" even begins, with the band reverting to the mellow, danceable guitar ballads that The Beatles were famously known for. Despite the idea being greatly innovative for their time, its execution is why Sgt. Pepper's status as a concept album is heavily disputed among the music gurus.
Despite its dubious status as such, Sgt. Pepper planted the seed for many rock bands to curate concept albums. At the dawn of the '70s, we see the beginning of a golden age for concept albums, with David Bowie's 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. A blend of sci-fi storytelling, glam rock spectacle, and David Bowie's famed grit tells the story of a fictional alien rock star and prophetic figure, Ziggy Stardust, and his rise and fall from fame, leading to his eventual burnout.
It's part space opera, part rockstar parable. Ziggy Stardust is sent to Earth to deliver a message of hope in the final five years before the planet's destruction. In those five years, Ziggy becomes entangled in earthly desires such as fame, drugs, and sex, leading him to his eventual downfall. As an album, Ziggy Stardust is the crystallization of the glam rock genre, to which Bowie is a major contributor. In his attempt at the concept album, Bowie fully embodied the figure of Ziggy Stardust, blurring the lines between performer and character, all while radically challenging concepts of queerness, masculinity, and identity, all of which were considered taboo at the time.
And while Ziggy Stardust was shiny makeup, platform boots, and sharp guitar riffs, just a year later, amid the solidification of progressive rock by its pioneers, Pink Floyd introduced The Dark Side of the Moon. In its immersiveness, it's a masterclass in sonic cohesion and thematic depth, exploring many of the pressures of the human condition, such as time, death, greed, and madness.
Unlike Ziggy Stardust, Dark Side of the Moon doesn't follow a character, but the theme of human experience, with songs like “Speak to Me" and "Breathe” which explore concepts of birth, existence, and anxiety about entering the world. "The Great Gig in the Sky" is about mortality and the inevitability of death, and the concept looms, enlarges itself as life progresses, becoming more disillusioned in "Money," culminating in the final reckoning of the human experience: madness, with "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse."
In its philosophical, emotional, and existential nature, Dark Side of the Moon redefined the album as a solitary and immersive experience, meant to be listened to from start to finish in one sitting.
While The Dark Side of the Moon was terrifying in its openness, vastness, and sense of loss, Pink Floyd’s 1979 mastodon of an album, The Wall, evokes claustrophobia and psychological decline. Yet it retains the band’s signature rawness, which in this work feels even more heightened.
It explores the story of Pink, a rockstar who isolates himself from the outside world by building a metaphorical wall, almost entirely made out of fear, trauma, loss, and the downsides of fame, which ultimately leads to Pink's downfall. It's an album that combines hard and prog rock, orchestral and operatic elements, leitmotifs, and sound effects. It's more personal, more real, as each song acts as a brick in the metaphorical wall Pink is building. It's the first instance of an album venturing into multimedia territory, as it's followed by a movie in 1982: Pink Floyd- The Wall by Alan Parker. It's a celebration and a damnation of the fragile nature of humanity at the same time, protesting it and then reclaiming it in a rising and falling motion that brings its listener along Pink's psychological odyssey.
Despite the speed at which the concept albums became popularized, their importance faded just as fast in the '80s. It was considered a transitional period for the concept album, with artists like Kate Bush with her 1986 album Hounds of Love, Prince with Purple Rain, and the initial attempts of hip-hop to carve itself a space in the concept album culture, which initially seemed an option only for the rock and pop genres. Artists like Boogie Down Productions with By All Means Necessary and Public Enemy with It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back began to use the concept album as a way to talk about social justice and Black empowerment, which, despite their lack of plot, the albums were unified in themes and the purpose behind them.
The '90s saw a complete rework of the concept album. Genres like metal, alt rock, hip-hop, and electronic music ventured into works that turned away from theatrical, presentation-driven stories and turned inward, dealing with themes of depression, addiction, and postmodern confusion.
The modern concept album becomes Radiohead's OK Computer, which maps a feeling of dread for how fast technology is progressing, leaving behind real-world feelings for automated numbness. It explores an overarching theme, but it's made up of smaller anxiety-ridden vignettes arranged in a deliberate manner. The album is littered with motifs of the terrifying idea of being replaced by machines ("Paranoid Android" and "Fitter Happier"), and that the introduction of technology into society will lead to digital alienation. It's a brilliant commentary on corporate greed and how its overdone usage of technology will lead to society's downfall.
The album is made up of heart-wrenching ballads like "Exit Music (For a Film)" and "No Surprises", which discuss breaking free from an oppressive system in a disillusioned and distant way.
“A heart that’s full up like a landfill / A job that slowly kills you / Bruises that won’t heal”
It expresses a numbness to a world that is constantly changing, but being too helpless to do anything about it. It's not a protest, but an exhausted sigh, backdropped by ghostly synths and automated voices, with instrumentals that mimic the push and pull of a nervous breakdown.
The hip-hop genre allowed character, storytelling, and social commentary to coexist with the big names already associated with concept albums. In 1994, The Notorious B.I.G. released his album Ready to Die, in which he told of his own life from birth to (symbolic) death. He talks about growing up in poverty in "Intro," a skit montage taking us through Biggie's significant early-life events during his formative years. There are themes of poverty and violence as formative forces during his bleak Brooklyn childhood, which make his unfortunate death by suicide even more devastating. Talking about mental health in rap in a period where masculinity was almost enforced felt genuine and powerful, making Ready to Die a landmark in the scope of concept albums.
In the post-9/11 daze, the concept album experienced a rebirth and rework. Pop-punk had its moment to shine with Green Day's revolutionary American Idiot, bringing back concept albums into the mainstream, complete with characters, motifs, and an overarching story. It's a modern pop-punk opera that combines disillusionment with an identity crisis circling its main character, Jesus of Suburbia. In this multi-part epic, Jesus of Suburbia ventures out of society to find meaning ("American Idiot", "Jesus of Suburbia") but ends up lost in a world of apathy and confusion ("Wake Me Up When September Ends", "Homecoming", and "Whatshername"). It's a coming-of-age breakdown set in a post 9/11 backdrop, in which each song reflects inner turmoil and social commentary. Much like The Wall, Green Day uses leitmotifs and recurring musical themes to tie each song together, combining classical pop-punk instrumentals with the drama of golden age concept albums.
And with a looming feeling of existential dread creeping around the youth, New Jersey band My Chemical Romance brings its own flair to the concept album, with both their albums, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (2004) and The Black Parade (2006), each telling two incredibly different stories. Steeped in gothic imagery, their execution is triumphant and theatrical, both revolved around two different concepts of death. In Three Cheers, the story being told is of a man who makes a deal with the devil to collect the souls of a thousand evil men, and if he succeeds, he'll be reunited with his lover in the afterlife. A plot that feels like a Greek myth, but not an epic, as the album doesn't narrate the man's journey into killing the thousand men, but rather the emotional turmoil he goes through, navigating themes of loss, grief, and the blurred line between love and vengeance.
Through each of the thirteen tracks of the album, the main character is consistent in his rageful grief, beginning with the funeral march "Helena," into the vengeful fantasy spiral of “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison.” By the second half of the album, however, there is a looming guilt regarding the man's actions, almost expressing regret for them, like in "Cemetery Drive." The explosive emo anthems are a journey through the stages of grief, reflecting the instability of the man's mind through his journey towards revenge.
While Three Cheers revolved around the concept of love and revenge, My Chemical Romance's most famous album, The Black Parade, is even more grandiose than its predecessor. It takes on daunting themes of legacy, telling the deathbed story of a man's life. He sees death as a parade he once saw as a child and discusses his deepest life regrets, his memories, and guilt. In its irony, the opening track is titled "The End.," symbolizing death as a new beginning. MCR draws from the great names behind some of the most iconic concept albums to conceive this explosive album, from heartfelt piano ballads to whiny guitars, and emo anthems that many still sing today.
The Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die paved the way for works like Kendrick Lamar's 2012 album good kid, m.A. A. d. city and To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) through the social commentary that Lamar uses to describe his own life growing up among the streets of Compton, California. It's a semi-autobiographical album about his teenage years and the challenges he faced growing up surrounded by gang violence, but also by love, faith, and family, and the duality of Compton, a city that he has always been proud of. The album involves some themes of family and community, interluded by tidbits of phone calls and voicemails that make it easier for the listener to immerse themselves in Kendrick's world. However, the story revolves around Kendrick meeting a girl and falling into the wrong circle of people ("Sherane a.k.a. Master Splinter's Daughter," "The Art of Peer Pressure," "good kid," and "m.A.A.d city") interluded by moments of hope and desire ("money trees" and "Poetic Justice") and others of hopelessness and escapism ("Swimming Pools (Drank)"). The piece ends with the emotional centerpiece "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst", to discuss his legacy and mortality.
"Promise that you'll sing about me forever"
And while many took to the concept albums to write about their lives, those who grew up on the narratives of MCR and Green Day preferred Halsey's debut album, Badlands. The album in itself is thematic, using the Badlands as a metaphor for mental isolation, emotional turmoil, and dystopia, and as Halsey herself described it, “a post-apocalyptic wasteland… sort of like a metaphor for the desolate and lonely state of mind I was in.” The predecessor to masterpieces like Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, and The Great Impersonator revolutionized many of the youth of Tumblr at the time, with the soaring anthem "New Americana," a commentary on the disillusioned youth and a longing for rebellion against both internal and external turmoil. With tracks like "Gasoline," "Ghost," and "Drive," Halsey invokes a feeling of wanting to escape, but not knowing where to go; an indecisiveness of not wanting to exit a zone of relative comfort even if it's harmful for your health.
Probably one of the most influential concept albums of the 21st century, winner of the GRAMMY for Best Progressive R&B Album, Beyoncé's sixth studio album, Lemonade, is a personal confession, a political manifesto, and a love letter to her culture in twelve inimitable tracks. Through the exploration of Black femininity, generational trauma, infidelity, and forgiveness, it feels a lot like Beyoncé's own diary while going through the five stages of grief. It blends genres from all over while staying faithful to R&B, taking elements from rock, country, and blues to be able to navigate us through her own internal turmoil. Lemonade is the perfect blend of who she is and the things she cares about as she celebrates herself as a woman, through the bad and the good ("Hold Up," "Sorry," "Don't Hurt Yourself," "Daddy Lessons"), and her heritage and identity as a Black woman whilst also speaking to the community as a whole ("Freedom" and "Formation"). Beyonce pours her whole heart into Lemonade, and you can feel it in the ebb and flow of every beat and note.
With the turn of a new decade, concept albums have become more diverse and fluid, bringing on an intimacy to themselves that has never been shown before. An honorable mention is Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple. Written and recorded entirely during the pandemic, it's a purge of years of pain about trauma, girlhood, and injustice. However, the most notable and complex concept album of the 2020s is, in my opinion, Ethel Cain's Preacher's Daughter. It tells the story of Ethel Cain, raised in a repressive small town, who runs away from home in search of freedom, but is only met with abuse, addiction, and her untimely, gruesome death. The album is imaginative, and it's set in a Southern Gothic aesthetic, serving as an allegory for queerness and the injustices of the American Dream.
The sound and ambiance hold a key role in the story, accompanied by Ethel Cain's famed droning sounds, creating a ghostly soundscape. The album is in chronological order, a funeral procession, narrating the events of Ethel's adventure, beginning with her reflecting about her life in her small dead-end town ("Family Tree (Intro)", and "American Teenager"), and the reflection of her long-gone unrequited love for Willoughby Tucker ("A House in Nebraska"), littered with mournful piano keys and lamentful vocals. She then meets a man who helps her run away, only to find out that there's no salvation, but just disappointing loneliness ("Western Nights", "Hard Times", "Thoroughfare"). The last few tracks of the album are chilling, leading with "Ptolemaea", a terrifying soundscape of screaming and demonic rattling, as Ethel finds out the man's true intentions, likely depicting her murder. The following tracks, "Televangelism" and "Sun Bleached Flies," are narrated by a mournful Ethel as she accepts her fate and finally exhales her final breath. The final song, "Strangers," is bone-chilling as it depicts Ethel being cannibalized by the man who killed her, as she chants:
"If I'm turning in your stomach am I making you feel sick?"
The song's outro ends with a melancholic ode to her mother, expressing regret for ever having ran away.
The concept album has undergone many genre shifts and definitions through the decades, but despite this, we have seen the extent of the human mind's creativity. From the psychedelic tunes of the '60s to today, concept albums have served as a testament of musical storytelling, allowing the listeners to inhabit the musicians' imaginations. As today's streaming culture favors singles and short attention spans, it's important to celebrate the art of storytelling in the concept album's format, and to trust the musician to help us get lost in a world of their creation.
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