# Whatever happened to the "concept album"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 4, 2002, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390 "2002-12-04T07:55:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![stuyguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@stuyguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stuyguy)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2002, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/41 "2002-12-05T21:03:53Z")
NYR407, creditting Sinatra with the first CA is not just flip speculation on my part. It is frequently stated by musicologists commenting on Frank’s career. Just one of those references (the easiest for me to dig out) is given in an article from Nov/Dec 2002 American Heritage Magazine by David Lehman: "… On the Capitol label he teamed up with [Nelson] Riddle to make the greatest albums of his career. With Riddle he created the first “concept” album, and possibly the greatest, “In the Wee Small Hours” (1955). All the songs share a somber mood, sweet though in sadness: Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo,” Harold Arlen’s “Last Night When We Were Young,” Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” and a trio of terrific Rodgers and Hart songs, “Glad to be Unhappy,” “It Never Entered My Mind,” and “Dancing on the Ceiling.”… " ---
**Author:** ![John\_T.Conklin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_t.conklin/32/3307_2.png) [@John\_T.Conklin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_T.Conklin)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2002, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/42 "2002-12-05T21:18:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by riserius1 \* > \*\*[www.allmusic.com](http://www.allmusic.com) only lists “Hounds of Love” for 1985 and I can find no reference to Kate Bush doing anything called “Ninth Wave”. Are you sure the artist/title is correct? > > Chris W \*\* The Ninth Wave is the B side of “Hounds of Love”. Call it “half” a concept album if you must… ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2002, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/43 "2002-12-05T21:53:02Z")
What about Mannheim Steamroller’s stuff? The latest “Fresh Aire” came out in 2001 (IIRC) and is all about infinity. ---
**Author:** ![Opengrave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/919ad9/32.png) [@Opengrave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Opengrave)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2002, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/44 "2002-12-05T21:56:29Z")
**Opeth** ’s _My Arms Your Hearse_ and _Still lIfe_. Also **King Diamond** ’s _Abigail_ and _Voodoo_. One of the **Amorphis** disks but I forget which one. **Bruce Dickinson** ’s _The Chemical Wedding_ & **Ulver** ’s _Themes from William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell_. ---
**Author:** ![KGS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90ced4/32.png) [@KGS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KGS)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2002, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/45 "2002-12-05T23:45:03Z")
Holy shit, I forgot about King Diamond. You left out _Them_, _Conspiracy_, _The Eye_, _House of God_…well, all of them, really. 🙂 Funny you mentioned _Chemical Wedding_. Another fan bitched me out over calling it a “concept album”, for the reasons described in my previous post. It’s definitely a “theme” album, though, with all songs based on the works of William Blake, but there’s no specific narrative stringing the songs together. Still, it’s much closer to a true concept album than some others mentioned in this thread… Ooh, ooh, thought of another one: **Blue Oyster Cult’s** _Imaginos_. Very specific narrative, albeit non-linear. ---
**Author:** ![kevlaw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kevlaw/32/2281_2.png) [@kevlaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kevlaw)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2002, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/46 "2002-12-05T23:57:04Z")
Only slightly off topic I hope … How come the absolute best concept album of all time, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, never made it big in the US ? I was having a conversation with a friend - call him ‘M’ - the other day and he said he’d never heard of it. I was astounded and told another friend that ‘M’ had never heard of it … ha ha ha … and he had never heard of it either. I had just assumed that it was one of those albums that EVERYONE owned - everyone my age in the UK owns it anyway. ---
**Author:** ![NYR407](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@NYR407](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NYR407)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2002, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/47 "2002-12-06T00:30:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by stuyguy \* > \*\*NYR407, creditting Sinatra with the first CA is not just flip speculation on my part. It is frequently stated by musicologists commenting on Frank’s career. Just one of those references (the easiest for me to dig out) is given in an article from Nov/Dec 2002 American Heritage Magazine by David Lehman: > > "… On the Capitol label he teamed up with [Nelson] Riddle to make the greatest albums of his career. With Riddle he created the first “concept” album, and possibly the greatest, “In the Wee Small Hours” (1955). All the songs share a somber mood, sweet though in sadness: Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo,” Harold Arlen’s “Last Night When We Were Young,” Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well,” and a trio of terrific Rodgers and Hart songs, “Glad to be Unhappy,” “It Never Entered My Mind,” and “Dancing on the Ceiling.”… " \*\* Stuyguy, I wasn’t saying you were making a flip statement just that I never heard of such a reference before. Now I know why. In the broadest sense of the term I guess you can call that a concept album. However IMHO, I don’t think taking a collection of songs that other people wrote and re-recording them yourself should qualify. Those songs were never intended to be a complete work to be listened to together. Granted the idea of putting them together on an album to make them appear as though they are does not sound like an easy task. I still don’t think it qualifies in my book. As always, YMMV. Kevlaw, who is Jeff Wayne? And how old are you? I never heard of him either. ---
**Author:** ![NYR407](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@NYR407](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NYR407)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2002, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/48 "2002-12-06T00:33:22Z")
Oh yeah, sorry I forgot to add: If Sinatra’s album qualifies wouldn’t any Christmas album qualify? Sounds like the same idea but with a harder theme. ---
**Author:** ![Soul\_Brother\_Number\_Two](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/soul_brother_number_two/32/3515_2.png) [@Soul\_Brother\_Number\_Two](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soul_Brother_Number_Two)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2002, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/49 "2002-12-06T00:38:22Z")
No one’s mentioned the best concept album of all time, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Peter Gabriel’s last album with Genesis. ---
**Author:** ![kevlaw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kevlaw/32/2281_2.png) [@kevlaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kevlaw)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2002, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/50 "2002-12-06T00:39:38Z")
> [@](#): > > Kevlaw, who is Jeff Wayne? And how old are you? I never heard of him either I am 36. I have never heard of Jeff Wayne either - apart from the War of the Worlds. WotW is a kind of Rock Opera re-telling of the HG Wells story, narrated by Richard Burton with the parts sung by british rock luminaries of the day like David Essex and Phil Lynott. IIRC it was released in the US in the early 90s (about 20 years after it’s orginal release) but didn’t make much of a splash. ---
**Author:** ![Skid\_Row](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/779978/32.png) [@Skid\_Row](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skid_Row)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2002, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/51 "2002-12-06T02:06:36Z")
As God as my witness, I LOVED… “The Elder” by KISS Yeah!!! YEAH!!! (Slinks back into the murky depths…) ---
**Author:** ![Lobot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@Lobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobot)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2002, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/52 "2002-12-06T02:10:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by essvee \* > \*\*No one’s mentioned the best concept album of all time, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Peter Gabriel’s last album with Genesis. \*\* Damn, beat me to it!🙂 Anyway, I don’t see why a “concept album” has to have a single, pervasive narrative throughout the album in order to qualify as one. “Concept album” implies that the tracks on the album follow a single theme (i.e. concept); whether or not there’s a narrative tying everything together doesn’t strike me as being all that relevant. I personally wouldn’t call **Close to the Edge** a concept album, but I would certainly call **Tales from Topographic Oceans** one. ---
**Author:** ![RexDart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b77776/32.png) [@RexDart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RexDart)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2002, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/53 "2002-12-06T23:12:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by essvee \* > \*\*No one’s mentioned the best concept album of all time, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Peter Gabriel’s last album with Genesis. \*\* That’s from the midseventies, isn’t it? I thought Peter Gabriel was with them longer. I’ve been meaning to track that one down, since the guys at the Jethro Tull site consider it almost complementary to _A Passion Play_ in some ways. ---
**Author:** ![Lobot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@Lobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobot)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2002, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/54 "2002-12-06T23:23:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by RexDart \* > \*\*That’s from the midseventies, isn’t it? I thought Peter Gabriel was with them longer. I’ve been meaning to track that one down, since the guys at the Jethro Tull site consider it almost complementary to _A Passion Play_ in some ways. \*\* It’s from 1974, to be exact. Gabriel was with Genesis from the start in '67 until the end of the Lamb tour in '75, so that’s still eight years at the helm. ---
**Author:** ![unwashed\_brain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/a9adbd/32.png) [@unwashed\_brain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unwashed_brain)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2002, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/55 "2002-12-06T23:43:13Z")
Getting back to more recent releases, _ **leitmotif** _ and _ **el cielo** _ by the band **dredg** are most definitely concept albums. check them out at [www.dredg.com](http://www.dredg.com) I think _ **Fantastic Planet** _ by **Failure** qualifies as well for its haunting Sci-Fi undertones. ---
**Author:** ![yawndave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/43a26b/32.png) [@yawndave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yawndave)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2002, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/56 "2002-12-07T23:43:27Z")
Pete Townshend’s 1993 release “PsychoDerelict” was certainly a concept album, as is his “Lifehouse Chronicles”, a 6-disc set. ---
**Author:** ![Lobot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@Lobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobot)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2002, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390/57 "2002-12-08T01:18:16Z")
I’d call Peter Gabriel’s **OVO** from 2000 to be a concept album, too. **UP** very nearly qualifies as well (but not quite). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whatever-happened-to-the-concept-album/140390.md?page=2)