15 concept albums that are worth listening to from beginning to end

Sometimes a concept album - a collection of songs united by a common idea and sound, and sometimes - a complete story about the fictional character in the created world. We have chosen 15 different genres releases, which only reveals the meaning of a careful listening from the first to the last track.

1. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (1966)

What a concept

The group became famous beach hits and Pet Sounds - its bold attempt to get away from the beaten moves. The plot is formed at the level of track titles and the disc itself is deeply imbued with the juvenile reflection. Beginning of the song is about dreams and hopes, the album ends with regret and disappointment about the past.

Pet Sounds is considered Time: All-TIME 100 Albums one of the first concept albums, songs in which resharpened to each other at a stage of creation. Paul McCartney admitted that it was after Pet Sounds, he hit on the idea "Sergeant Pepper" - one of the most popular albums in the world.

as it sounds

For us - as quite classic The Beach Boys. For the group of contemporaries - the album yesterday's surf-rockers Kings and carefree parties, which have suddenly become more complex and experimental. For the fullness of sound instruments meet the most unexpected: from the theremin and body to car horns and bicycle horns.

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2. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

What a concept

All the songs of the album are not executed on behalf of The Beatles, and on behalf of the "Lonely Hearts Club Band Sergeant Pepper", led by the fictional character Billy Shears.

By 1967, "the Beatles' last four years have been the stars in the UK, three - in the United States, and the image of the young men in suits with the same hairstyles they expected fed up. Therefore, Paul McCartney came up with extravagant idea: call the team a different name, change the image and the sound to be released from labeled as. Thus was born Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

To shoot on the cover of the album the musicians dressed in satin costumes resembling military uniforms, as well as released a mustache and beard. The order of songs is also talking about a completely different group: the album begins with the presentation of the team and its members.

Another bold decision - already on the sound level - a complete rejection of the pauses between tracks. Now it does not seem unusual, but in the era of vinyl records listener often gets confused trying to find a groove with the right song.

as it sounds

In 1967, The Beatles are just beginning to experiment with sound and psychedelic - climax this trend reached a year later in the famous "White Album."

The Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band «The Beatles» embody the full potential of the studio "Abbey Road." For example, slow down, and speed up the track in songs to achieve certain effects or used in recording with Sitar tampuroy. And sometimes - and a symphony orchestra.

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3. The Who - Tommy (1969)

What a concept

Tommy - is solid and extremely soulful 75-minute story about a deaf-blind boy Tommy, as well as the world's first rock opera. The audience did not immediately took the album, but over time it has become a classic rock - it performed by an orchestra, for it made films and put musicals.

Events unfold after album First World War. In the story, a certain Captain Walker goes missing, and soon his wife gives birth to a son, Tommy. Four years later, Walker returns home and finds a lover of his wife: in the heat of conflict, he kills him in front of a child.

Parents convinced the boy that he did not see anything, did not hear and did not have to tell anyone, with the result that the injured Tommy becomes blind, deaf and dumb. The boy was waiting for a long and thorny path from despair to enlightenment.

as it sounds

As a real opera with refrains, characters and serious drama. All this - in the garb of rock music, which The Who and sympathizers invented in the 1960s.

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4. David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

What a concept

The album is dedicated to the androgynous Ziggy Stardust musician accompanying him "Spiders from Mars." Stardust arrives on Earth, with the help of music to preach peace and love to a dying planet.

David Bowie - a master of reincarnation, and his characters live not only in the album. Between Ziggy Stardust actor asked to be identified and supported image, performing on stage in a strange futuristic suit reminiscent apparel actors Japanese theaters.

as it sounds

Heterogeneously: pop choruses are interspersed replaced ballad, and rock 'n' roll theme - hard rock riffs. In general, it's about the music that we are accustomed to imagine hearing the name David Bowie.

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5. Lou Reed - Berlin (1973)

What a concept

The most tragic love story in our collection. Characters - Jim and Caroline met in a cafe at the Berlin Wall. tenderness arose between them is faced with the harsh reality, social barriers and irreconcilable differences. A final story will be the suicide of one of the characters.

By the way, Berlin - not only the conceptual work of Lou Reed. Two years later, after the musician released the album Metal Machine Music, which critics call a prototype of noise and industrial. According to many, these genres of music can not hear.

as it sounds

As rich in tools art rock 1970 with nuarny mood and estranged announcer as the narrator.

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6. David Tukhmanov - "On the wave of my memory" (1976)

What a concept

Music of the Soviet composer can be heard in the pop hits "last train" and "My address - the Soviet Union." "On the wave of my memory" - an attempt to create something larger and more whole.

Tukhmanov chips used peeped Western musicians, combining sound academic to art-rock guitars and electronics. On the pop sound imposed classic poems are not the most obvious of the authors: Sappho, Baudelaire, Goethe and Voloshin.

Performers already looking for ready-made songs - on a result they have become a little-known Soviet talented vocalists have had the opportunity to sing something really unusual. They all agreed that the album - a revolution for its time: on what does not like the sound is accompanied by a deep and complex text.

as it sounds

Famous graduates Gnesinka combines sophisticated classical music with new rhythms and proves that in the era of our parents from the speakers sounded not only political anthems.

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7. Pink Floyd - The Wall (1979)

What a concept

Fictional hero Pink Floyd talks about his alienation from society - conditional wall enclosing the identity of other people. Pink can not find themselves either in the family or in the school or on the stage, and eventually builds between himself and the world of the barrier of loneliness and drugs. The latter, however, lead him to madness.

album looped plot, and the story of Floyd listener learns features Pink Floyd leader Roger Waters. Three years after the release of the album directed by Alan Parker lift Directed by Alan Parker - kinopoisk the eponymous film, which will be the best illustration of The Wall.

as it sounds

As Pink Floyd in the form of canonicity and with major hits like a small Comfortably Numb and Another Brick In The Wall, which is then not just singing in school demonstrations.

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8. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads (1996)

What a concept

Nick Cave I laid the basis for an album folk and original ballads about love and death. As you might guess from the name, the romantic stories here come to an end in murder. And the lyrics talk about the real criminals like pimp Shelton Lee, who killed a rival of imaginary suitors, deal with their brides, and even the victims of gang rape, eager to sweep.

as it sounds

Quite hits - for this album Cave even nominated for an MTV award. A collaboration with Kylie Minogue Where the Wild Roses Grow, you are likely to hear, even if never carried away by the artist. In general, Murder Ballads - is recognizable gothic new wave which has become the hallmark of Nick Cave.

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9. Green Day - American Idiot (2004)

What a concept

History is dedicated to a certain Jesus of suburbia - confuse a guy who lives in a relatively modern America. Listener waiting a few hackneyed plot twists about finding yourself through drugs, talk about problems American society and, of course, love poems: the protagonist loses his head, meeting Woman-rebel.

as it sounds

The album, a collection of one hundred percent hit on the most popular pop-punk zero. Are you sure you heard half these songs: clips on some of them seen on MTV, and the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, maybe even singing in karaoke.

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10. My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade (2006)

What a concept

The protagonist - a patient - is dying of cancer. In anticipation of imminent death, he tries to imagine what was waiting for him, and remembers his life.

as it sounds

As the saddest rock music from the one that played on MTV in the early zero. "Black Parade" with Gerard belovlasym Ueem headed - a sentimental 14 songs, many of which touched a year later and cause nostalgia for youth.

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11. "Cops on Fire" - "Cops on Fire" (2009)

What a concept

Album-performance: the history of caricature police told with the help of hip-hop and theatrical performance. The "Cops on Fire" is not the release as such, many of the tracks from the presentation can be found only in group "In contact with".

In the story of a cop Kozulskoy, Black cop, Jablonski and Pipi are fighting with a club of eight killers headed by Dzhigurdamorisom. Hip-hop musical show is no longer live, but on the Internet you can find a lot of fragments of performances.

as it sounds

"Cops on Fire" - a funny old school hip-hop, who have not learned to do in Russia. Very original, interesting and nestydno.

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12. Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012)

What a concept

Album Autobiography Kendrick Lamar about criminal youth in Compton. It will be all that you would expect to hear about life in the ghetto: theft, drugs and violent clashes criminal gangs.

as it sounds

This current hip-hop on one of the most prominent musical figures of our time. The album marked the 25-year-old Kendrick Lamar on the map big hip-hop in 2012, and if you like, and DNA Alright, do not get to know him simply illegal.

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13. Oxxxymiron - «Gorgorod" (2015)

What a concept

Miron Fedorov immerses the listener in the anti-utopian fictional events Gorgoroda. Writer Mark faces a merciless love, power and cunning choice between truth and life - all as settled and Zamyatin OrwellOnly slightly less talented.

as it sounds

Second studio album Oxxxymiron - rather mediocre musically, but lyrically interesting hip-hop story. And it sounds, finally, in their own language - to gain insight into the history, do not have to sit with a dictionary.

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14. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Nonagon Infinity (2016)

What a concept

In the infinite and cyclic plot: each of the nine song flows into the next, and the last - in first. In this album, not something that is perceived at one go - it looks like one long song with a recurrent musical sketches.

as it sounds

As a brisk 40-minute guitar composition. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - one of the main guitar rock bands of our time (at least from the Australian continent) and Nonagon Inginity critics have called one of the most important albums of the group.

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15. Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, James McAllister - Planetarium (2017)

What a concept

The musical interpretation of cosmic bodies, whatever that meant. Solar system have tried to make sense of four musicians: singer Sufjan Stevens, The National guitarist Bryce Desner composer Nick Muhly and drummer James McAlister. Each track is dedicated to one of the space bodies: it is possible to imagine in advance how it should sound like each of them, and to compare with what happened with the team.

as it sounds

In different ways: Venus recalls musicians love, Mars - about the armed conflict, and the Earth - about the impending environmental disaster. But no matter what we face may be, each track - a good combination of ambient instrumental landscapes and sweet voice Sufyan Stevens.

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