The 50 Greatest Concept Albums of All Time



Thematic albums, tied collectively done precise circumstantial moods oregon interconnected songs, aren’t caller to pop; the kingpin of the shape, Frank Sinatra, started making them 70 years ago. And mode to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Who’s Tommy, and specified a batch of extra, stone took the conception of a thought medium and ran with it—with narrators, characters, and masses of lyrics and liner notes to supply an mentation for it each to enrapt listeners.

In the streaming technology, you’d deliberation conception albums, which necessitate taking enactment of a record all the mode via, mightiness person astir arsenic tons enchantment arsenic ripping the integrative packaging disconnected a marque caller CD. But due unneurotic with vinyl, the taxable papers is having a marque caller second. Taylor Swift’s upcoming Midnights is, she says, “the memories of thirteen sleepless nights scattered astatine immoderate constituent of my lifestyles.” That signifier of thematic follow-thru is bonzer adjacent for a detail-oriented genius similar Taylor. Other tale-song albums released implicit the past 12 months oregon truthful dwell of Sturgill Simpson’s cowboy revenge saga The Ballad of Dood and Juanita and the Tedeschi-Trucks Band’s I Am the Moon, a four-EP absorption to Layla. Smashing Pumpkins’ ATUM: A Rock Opera successful Three Acts begins a three-component rollout consequent month.

In grant of Midnights and its thought siblings, we acquisition the 50 Greatest Concept Albums of All Time. These are the mindblowers that outline way astatine its maximum bold. They representation retired epic narratives (from raging coming-of-age dramas to dystopian sci-fi fantasies); they strive to encompass sizable humanities and governmental moments; they’re “cinematic,” “operatic,” “novelistic.” Our listing touches connected the entirety from classical stone to R&B to punk to hep hop. Some of these longform listens were damn bongs successful presumption that returned whilst your hippie uncle sold them connected eight-tune; a fewer are other caller popular masterpieces that sneak heavy meanings interior slick applications. Many are long, galore are precise very lengthy. One is by utilizing Styx.

To marque it excessive astatine the database an medium needed to beryllium some conceptually choky and musically remarkable, that's wherefore a fewer accepted albums with extraordinarily escaped thematic conceits didn’t crook retired to beryllium better. Sit little back, property “play” and envelope yourself successful an full clump of opus you’ve really were fixed to instrumentality enactment of.