by Sam H. and Aero S.
Concept albums are nothing new, but they remain one of the most exciting ways artists can package their art and express themselves. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve definitely heard (and loved) at least one concept album or another. Most concept albums tell a narrative story, build a world where the listener will be immersed through the songs and interludes, or set a backdrop that helps the artist talk about certain topics. With the advancement of technology and how music is marketed and delivered, concept albums have become even more of a common thing, especially among bigger artists. With so many such albums around, there are bound to be hits and misses, which begs the question: what makes some of these albums so good?
To answer this question, we must set parameters; the concepts have to be relatively clear, either through the records’ lyricism, adjacent aesthetics, or tracklist and contents. It’s also important to note that many concept albums aren’t in this article, not because they are bad, but because we aren’t privy to them or have very limited knowledge of them. Additionally, we decided to focus on American concept albums. Below are some elements that we believe make up a solid concept album.
Interludes with in-universe or concept-aligned audio
Having interludes doesn’t necessarily make an album a concept album. However, many concept albums have interludes that contribute to the world-building aspect and the development of the overarching concept and themes of the album. The interludes should also be situated within the album to provide structure to the concept.
An example of this is the interludes in the “Long Lost” album by Lord Huron, which is an album following the rediscovery of an old musical act. One interlude is called “(One Hellava Performer)” in which we hear a host introduce a performer and the audience clapping, and in the interlude “(Sing for Us Tonight),” we hear that same host ask the performer: “What would you like to sing for us tonight?” These audio clips are positioned throughout the album to remind listeners to go through the album sequentially to uphold the concept throughout the listening experience. We’re taking in the songs along with the crafted universe.
“Dreamland” by Glass Animals also employs a similar technique. This album deconstructs childhood and adolescence in a dream-like, reflective haze. Throughout the album are “home movies,” which feature audio from home movies that the lead singer’s mother videotaped during his childhood. These home movies are scattered throughout the album to evoke nostalgia and to remind viewers of the central theme of growing up that the album is centered around.
2. Thematic Visuals and Supplemental Materials
Many concept albums utilize thematic visuals through album covers, posters, concert designs, merchandise, music videos, and more. The best concept albums find a creative way to tie their concepts into creative elements for devoted fans to follow the threads and connect the stories together.
Lord Huron has employed incredible supplemental materials and merchandise for several of the albums to support the story told through their concept albums. For their “Strange Trails” album, they produced a comic detailing the characters mentioned in songs throughout the album. They also produced a series of videos called “(Alive From Whispering Pines),” which is a variety show that features performances that appear in the “Long Lost” album.
In Glass Animals’ “How to Be a Human Being,” there’s a lineup of characters on the album cover, and each song on the album is dedicated to a separate character. Though we don’t know most of the characters’ names, we know the person in the center of the album with the camera is Agnes, whose song is last on the album. The music videos for the album all feature the characters to highlight their unique stories.
My Chemical Romance, a band with one of the highest-concept discographies ever, in our opinion, created a whole world in which their “Danger Days” album fits. This wasn’t entirely deliberate, as Gerard Way will tell you himself: “The Killjoys project is an interesting thing because it evolved and grew into this other thing. It was the thing I was most obsessed with, creatively, so it bled into the music. And then, it became a concept album and a comic. And I was hesitant to marry the two things because I felt like I had done such a good job of separating the two things.” The band’s 2010 album tells the battle of art vs. profit and how commercial success can hinder artistic expression and freedom. The comics that would later be released flesh out the characters of the Killjoys even further and build a world that properly contextualizes the songs and the tracks that feature Dr. Death Defying, who is seemingly a radio DJ telling the audience where they are in the story and catching them up on the characters’ journeys. In one interlude titled “Jet-Star and the Kobra Kid,” he tells us, in slightly coded language, that Killjoy members Jet-Star and Kobra Kid had a run-in with the antagonists of the story, Better Living Industries that had gone south and killed them. While there are slight deviations between each iteration of the story, the comics, album, as well as the music video for “Na Na Na” and “Sing,” which feature all members of the band playing different characters, establish a somewhat cohesive storyline.
Perhaps the most committed a musician can be to a concept is to create a series of interconnected music videos that, when watched together, tell a story complete with character arcs and a message, and that’s exactly what Fall Out Boy did on their first album after their infamous hiatus, “Save Rock and Roll.” Comprised of 11 tracks and videos, the concept album follows the band as they fight against a few gangs that want to eradicate music for different reasons, and it’s a crazy watch. A bonfire full of the band’s older memorabilia is set on fire by a flamethrower-wielding 2 Chainz. The band’s lead singer, Patrick Stump, gets his hand cut off and is conditioned to become violent when he hears music. The rest of the band dies off one by one as the series continues. Courtney Love, Big Sean, Foxes, and Elton John, who all feature on the album, also appear in the series (with Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee making a cameo as the devil to Elton’s god). The entire series is interesting and plays like an independent short film with a stacked cast, and most importantly, showing the band’s determination to fulfill their album title to save rock and roll.
3. Interconnected lyrics and songs
Arguably, this is the important part of any concept album. Having lyrics and songs that relate to one another is the most seamless way to uphold a concept during the listening experience. Lord Huron does this point masterfully, but considering that we’ve spent a lot of time already praising them, we’ll highlight some other notable albums and artists in this section.
Bastille’s “Doom Days” album follows a party celebrating the end of the world. The song titles are all interconnected, following different points in the night. For example, the first song is “Quarter Past Midnight,” which marks the start of the party and the exact time it starts. Towards the end of the night is the song “4 am,” which is another marker for the time and indicates that the night is coming to a close.
The narrative throughline of Tyler the Creator’s “IGOR” may not be evident upon first listen, which is fine – as a listener, the album is just as fun without knowledge of the story as it is with it. However, those who kept an eye out for the lyrics and are particularly good at putting things together can glean that the album tells the story of a character stuck in a love triangle when he starts dating a man whose relationship with both him and a girl he’s seeing is uncommitted, and how the main character moves on from the situation. The relationship is introduced in the opening track, “Earfquake,” and the story's conflict is established in “New Magic Wand”, where the main character tries to devise a plan to get the woman his sort-of boyfriend is also sort of seeing out of the picture. Character development occurs when the main character realizes his relationship is bad for him, as conveyed in “What’s Good.” Interspersed between these songs are quotes from comedian Jerrod Carmichael, who explains why the events of the story and the conflicts in the relationship are happening. This is an incredibly condensed retelling of the album as a complete work – if you want to dig deeper into the nuances of the narrative of this album, this article is a gold mine of analysis and information.
After looking at these concept albums, it’s clear why artists have created them to expand on their ideas and why they continue to do so. Records are a great form of expression and to share ideas and messages, but when it seems too restrictive, artists are increasingly able to branch out to other mediums to create broader works of art that go beyond their songs to build new worlds, highlight the nuances of their messages, and tell a story that otherwise would not have been possible with older album conventions. As technology advances, we can expect the parameters for concept albums to be even wider, incorporating new media and forms of expression to help enrich their music and elaborate on their ideas.