Thanks to songwriting contributions from guitarist Dick Wagner (Lou Reed, Kiss) and producer Bob Ezrin, the album deftly spans goth fantasies (“Steven”), Fred Astaire dance numbers (“Some Folks”), feminist ballads (“Only Women Bleed”), and Shaft-esque funkathons (the title cut) - sometimes at the same time. The Execution: Alice Cooper was staging ornate, macabre vaudeville revues before Welcome to My Nightmare, but it was only after he ditched the original bandmates and went all-in on his nightmare concept that he became Alice Cooper, the rare ghoul able to upset parents but also gab with Dinah Shore. The Concept: A teenager named Steven finds himself trapped in his nightmares, encountering hungry black widow spiders, necrophiliacs, and Vincent Price before a rude awakening and a happy ending. Sit back, press “play” and envelope yourself in a whole bunch of music you’ve really got to pay attention to. To make it high on the list an album had to be both conceptually tight and musically awesome, which is why a few classic albums with relatively loose thematic conceits didn’t end up higher. Many are long, several are very very long.
Some of those longform listens have been rattling bongs since back when your hippie uncle bought them on 8-track some are more recent pop masterpieces that sneak deep meanings inside slick packages. They map out epic narratives (from raging coming-of-age dramas to dystopian sci-fi fantasies) they strive to embody vast historical and political moments they’re “cinematic,” “operatic,” “novelistic.” Our list touches on everything from classic rock to R&B to punk to hip hop.
These are the mindblowers that define music at its most ambitious. In honor of Midnights and its concept siblings, we present the 50 Greatest Concept Albums of All Time. Smashing Pumpkins’ ATUM: A Rock Opera in Three Acts begins a three-part rollout next month. Other story-song albums released over the last year or so include 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 response to Layla. Taylor Swift’s upcoming Midnights is, she says, “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life.” That kind of thematic follow-through is impressive even for a detail-oriented genius like Taylor. But right along with vinyl, the theme record is having a new moment. In the streaming era, you’d think concept albums, which require listening to a record all the way through, would have about as much appeal as ripping the plastic packaging off a new CD. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Who’s Tommy, and so many more, rock took the concept of a concept album and ran with it-with narrators, characters, and lots of lyrics and liner notes to explain it all to enrapt listeners. Thematic albums, tied together by very specific moods or interconnected songs, aren’t new to pop the kingpin of the form, Frank Sinatra, started making them 70 years ago.
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