# Best concept album ever? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 4, 2003, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991 "2003-05-04T08:17:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Nightime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Nightime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightime)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/61 "2003-05-07T00:35:19Z")
> [@](#): > > Total Ripoff: Ok,Computer. It’s the only CD I own that I wouldn’t mind trading in for cash, its that bad. Really? OK Computer is one of my favorite albums. I would put it alongside _In the Aeroplane Over the Sea_, but I don’t really think of it as a concept album. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/62 "2003-05-07T01:33:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ludovic \* > \*\*Total Ripoff: Ok,Computer. It’s the only CD I own that I wouldn’t mind trading in for cash, its that bad. \*\* :eek: Blashpemy! With the possible exception of My Bloody Valentine’s _Loveless_ or, perhaps, the more popular _Nevermind_ by Nirvana, this has got to be the pinnacle of rock music in the 90s. As for whatever y’all consider concept albums, I do wholeheartedly support Neutral Milk Hotels’s _In the Aeroplane by the Sea_. If the Flaming Lips’ _Yoshimi …_ qualifies, I’ll throw a vote in that direction, too. ---
**Author:** ![HookerChemical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@HookerChemical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HookerChemical)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/63 "2003-05-07T03:20:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Solomon7t \* > \*\*What exactly is a concept album? \*\* This is kinda answered in some of these posts, but never directly, so I’ll take my shot at it. Others should feel free to correct me if they disagree. A concept album is an album on which all the songs are connected by a common theme. The theme is often somme kind of story as in the case of The Lamb Lies Down… Sometime the theme is a bit more nebulous like on Thick as a Brick. Qualifying an album as a concept album is a fuzzy subject. For example, the first side of Aqualung is generally about the lower class in London while the second half is generally about organized religion. The two halves aren’t obviously connected, but the whole album is generally considered a concept album. There have been a couple of albums listed above that I wouldn’t call a concept album; there are a couple I’m sure are concept albums, but I can’t for the life of me explain the concept. [minor hijack] Can anybody help me with the unifying concept behind Dark Side of the Moon, Fragile, OK Computer, or Kid A? I like all of them, and I generally see them listed as concept albums, but I don’t understand that the common theme is. [/minor hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/64 "2003-05-07T04:42:58Z")
I don’t know that there’s an overarching concept (which is true of a lot of the albums listed here). But there are themes. I’ve overanalyzed _OK Computer_ the most, so I’d say it’s about alienation from the modern world. [Is that unique? Not particularly, _Dark Side_ shares a lot of that idea.] Technology plays a big role, usually a dehumanizing one, and there several songs that commonly deal with characters feeling helpless and drifting, raging but not sure what against. I think it’s a bit hard to describe because to me, the music is very expressive, and the band (Thom Yorke especially) tends toward abstract lyrics. It’s not a story-album like _The Wall_ and some of the others here, it’s a concept album literally. There are threads that run throughout the album, and you can assemble a great deal from them if you so choose. I was just looking at one website that says references to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Brave New World and 1984 can be seen through the album, and I think that sums up a lot in terms of its perspective. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/65 "2003-05-07T04:51:52Z")
Oh, and Radiohead has said that _Kid A_ is the story of the first human clone. I’d go on but I’d mostly be giving my own interpretation. I look at _Dark Side of the Moon_ as being about the way people die slowly every day, in little moments and little ways. Some of that stuff is laid out pretty bluntly in Time. Just my take. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/66 "2003-05-07T11:54:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Marley23 \* > \*\*I look at _Dark Side of the Moon_ as being about the way people die slowly every day, in little moments and little ways. Some of that stuff is laid out pretty bluntly in Time. Just my take. \*\* I just watched an excellent program on the making of _Dark Side of the Moon_ a few days ago. Roger Waters said that one of the themes that emerged in the making of the album (and which, to some degree, permeates later records) was that of “empathy” (particularly in “Us and Them”). I think the intended overarching theme of DSotM was a bit more nebulous than that, though. ---
**Author:** ![RTA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b4bc9f/32.png) [@RTA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTA)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/67 "2003-05-07T12:41:08Z")
What - nobody picked Robert Calvert’s trancendentally sublime _Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters_? You people don’t know what you’re missing. [www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/reviews/index.php?review\_id=74](http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/reviews/index.php?review_id=74) Otherwise, I’d go for _Radio K.A.O.S._ which is really really great, although now that I think about it _Animals_ is probably a stronger artistic statement. ---
**Author:** ![Lisa-go-Blind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7c8e57/32.png) [@Lisa-go-Blind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lisa-go-Blind)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2003, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/68 "2003-05-07T20:12:45Z")
Hopefully this won’t sound rude, but how is **In the Aeroplane Over the Sea** a concept album? What’s the concept? I know “Holland, 1945” is about Anne Frank, but the entire album is not about her. Besides, Jeff Mangum’s lyrics are a bit too obtuse to be about a particular theme. Even stating that **In the Aeroplane Over the Sea** only has related themes isn’t even true. “Oh Comely” is a despairing look at death, while “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” is nearly elated about what happens when we die. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/69 "2003-05-15T13:34:11Z")
In my own interpretation, _OK Computer_ is about the emptiness of the technological end (both chronological `end' and `end’ as a synonym for `aspect') of the 20th century. It touches on technology directly ("Paranoid Android"), politics ("Electioneering"), and alienation from loved ones ("Exit Music (For A Film)"). It ostensibly `takes place’ in a modern airport, the very image of modern Modernity, but that is mainly alluded to in the box art and some incidental sounds. _Dark Side of the Moon_ is about how modern life can drive you mad. It directly compares the `real world’ to a mental institution, and it states that our normality is just a pretense underlied by essential madness (“Everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon”). Both are best experienced as an extended excursion into a certain frame of mind, not as a story or a coherent narrative. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/70 "2003-05-15T14:44:48Z")
I’d like to thank you all for playing, but the correct answer is: **Kate Bush** _Hounds of Love/The Ninth Wave_ ---
**Author:** ![Nightime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Nightime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightime)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/71 "2003-05-15T15:08:13Z")
> [@](#): > > Hopefully this won’t sound rude, but how is In the Aeroplane Over the Sea a concept album? What’s the concept? I know “Holland, 1945” is about Anne Frank, but the entire album is not about her. Besides, Jeff Mangum’s lyrics are a bit too obtuse to be about a particular theme. “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” “There are lights in the clouds Anna’s ghost all around Hear her voice as it’s rolling and ringing through me” “Holland, 1945” “The only girl I’ve ever loved Was born with roses in her eyes But then they buried her alive One evening 1945” “Oh Comely” “And I know they buried her body with others Her sister and mother and 500 families And will she remember me 50 years later I wished I could save her in some sort of time machine” “Ghost” “And she was born in a bottle rocket 1929 With wings that ringed around a socket Right between her spine All drenched in milk, in holy water” “Two-Headed Boy Pt Two” “And when we break we’ll wait for our miracle God is a place where some holy spectacle lies And when we break we’ll wait for our miracle God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life” The other songs only seem to belong to the theme if you have read Anne Frank’s diary. They are about awkward adolescent love, amid hardship and death, similar to Anne and Peter. The singer describes a modern situation that in many ways parallels that of Anne Frank and Peter (awkward adolescent love amid hardship and death), with perhaps the intention to show that all goes on and on, and he is haunted by Anne’s ghost, wishing he could go back in a time machine and save her. Maybe to really understand it you have to have read the diary, sort of fallen in love with Anne Frank, and wished that you could go back and save her. Of course I haven’t even scratched the surface of what the album means to me, but those things can’t quite be told. I’ll just say that I don’t find the lyrics obtuse at all, though they are surely not obvious and depend a great deal on the mind of the listener. God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life could refer to the ghost of Anne Frank which haunts most of the songs, or perhaps the more modern girl who is so like Anne Frank, who fell from the top of a burning apartment building. It is up to the listener. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/72 "2003-05-15T18:08:04Z")
One I didn’t see mentioned that really surprised me… **Alan Parsons - I Robot.** ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2003, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/73 "2003-05-15T23:54:43Z")
Another vote for the greatness of **Quadrophrenia**. And speaking of Rick Wakeman – **The Six Wives of Henry VIII**. And thanks for the Joni Mitchel shoutout, **koeeoaddi** old friend. ---
**Author:** ![Yeticus\_Rex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a698b9/32.png) [@Yeticus\_Rex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yeticus_Rex)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991/74 "2003-05-16T01:05:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lieu \* > \*\*One I didn’t see mentioned that really surprised me… > > **Alan Parsons - I Robot.** \*\* Dammit, you’re right! As a matter of fact, most of the earlier albums have great themes: Eve Eye In The Sky Gaudi I Robot Pyramid The Turn of a Friendly Card Vulture Culture [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-concept-album-ever/172991.md?page=3)