The concept album is dead – and it was never great to begin with

In German, there is a word, verschlimmbessern. It is used to describe an intended improvement that turns out to have the opposite effect. Airbags were invented to save lives, but they explode with such force that they sometimes kill. Cane toads were introduced into Queensland to cut down on harmful pesticides, and whoops, an irreversible ecological plague.

There is no greater example of musical verschlimmbessern than that of the concept album – vaguely defined as a record designed around a central narrative, a unifying theme or a particular artistic device. The definition may be hazy, but the very whiff of it sends music critics into fits of schwärmerei (German for “unbridled and excessive enthusiasm”).

The Beatles started all of this with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.Credit: AP

The intention is to elevate an LP into a literary work of art, and the artist into a mythical genius. Yet more often than not, the “concept” serves only to confuse and complicate, resulting in a record that succeeds neither as a collection of songs nor a cohesive piece of storytelling – a half-built ship with a fancy paint job, lost in a desolate sea of compromised ideas.

The concept album emerged in the 1960s, with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles and its like, and it endures to this day. The Waterboys just released Life, Death and Dennis Hopper, inspired by the Hollywood icon, and Car Seat Headrest will release The Scholars in early May, told from the perspective of various students at a fictional college.

It’s an exciting idea. Taking a listener on a sonic journey, immersing them in an experience that is both cinematic and enthralling. Occasionally, it works: Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, for example, transports us to one particularly wild day in the Compton of Kendrick’s childhood, explores characters with depth and provides narrative payoff to those who listen from start to finish. The result is the greatest album of the 21st century.

But make no mistake: this is the exception, not the rule. Almost always, a concept album (no matter how good the concept might be on paper) quickly devolves into a conceited exercise in ego and forced-together puzzle pieces. Whether the artist is trying to tell an overarching story, write songs from different perspectives, or experiment with the form itself, it’s nearly impossible to pull off.

Some concept albums try to reinvent the wheel, and find themselves buried beneath their ambition, with the gimmick swamping the songs themselves. Commercial Album by the Residents consists of 40 songs, all one minute long. It’s a fun idea, but it runs out of juice quickly, becoming tedious and distracting. The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands sees the Turtles pretend to be 12 bands across 12 songs of wildly different genres, including country, psychedelia, surf rock, pop and R&B – a baffling listening experience.

Far worse is the narrative-driven concept album. If, when you look up a recipe online, your favourite part is the long, needlessly complicated story serving no purpose and obscuring the actual food, then concept albums are for you!

Even some of the most acclaimed concept albums are a kuddelmuddel (a fun German word for “frustrating mess”). Tommy by the Who is the most overrated rock album ever – a self-indulgent rock opera with a story so convoluted and nonsensical that it makes the final season of Game of Thrones seem completely buttoned up. Ditto The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis, an impossible-to-follow odyssey that crumples under Peter Gabriel’s pretentious desires (on Wikipedia, the plot summary for this album is longer than the one for The Godfather).

The fact is, the best “concept album” is one that lets the songs do the heavy lifting, positioning the concept as secondary and allowing the music to live and die on its own terms. Every song on David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, for example, was already written before the premise of the story was even conceived. American Idiot by Green Day works as a scathing commentary on post-9/11 America, with or without the central character of teenage slacker Jimmy. Or consider Hot Fuss by the Killers, which wasn’t positioned as a concept album, but was so entrancing that fans theorised that the songs should be rearranged into a scintillating story of paranoia, unrequited love, and murder.

There is a German word (last one, I promise): schnapsidee, which means an idea that seems genius after a few drinks, but in reality, is terrible. It’s time for us to sober up.