4 of the Most Interesting Rock Concept Albums of the 21st Century

November 18, 2024 11:18 am

Concept albums are the ADHD hyper-fixation of the music world. Bear with me on this—an artist gets an idea in their head and it consumes them so completely that they write an entire album around it. They eat, sleep, and breathe this concept, and it turns into a masterpiece of storytelling and, most often, elaborate fiction. There can be hidden truths in a concept album, but the four we’re focusing on here are cohesive narrative worlds on their own.

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American Idiot burst onto the scene in 2004, with Green Day taking a conceptual approach to their album craft while keeping their signature sound. The rock opera opens incredibly strong with the brash, thumping title track, setting up the narrative right out of the gate. The album was inspired by political events at the time, such as 9/11 and the Bush administration. However, Billie Joe Armstrong ultimately hoped American Idiot would remain timeless as a concept album, creating a more overarching narrative that would reach into the future. 20 years later, it still holds up, for better or worse.

Concept Albums Rule Rock, From Green Day’s Political Punk Influences to My Chemical Romance’s Emo Death Narrative

My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade is a concept album rooted in Gerard Way’s idea that death comes to us all in the form of our fondest memory. This rock opera also touches on political unrest, tyranny, and fascism as minor themes. Mainly, it focuses on The Patient as he relives his life while dying from cancer. Death comes to The Patient in the form of a parade, featuring My Chemical Romance as their fictional alter-ego band, The Black Parade.

My Chemical Romance also wanted to create a work that would last. According to guitarist Ray Toro, who spoke to Alternative Press in 2016, they wanted “Something that 20 or 30 years from now, parents could play for their kids and say, ‘This is what I was listening to when I was your age. Check it out, it’s still cool.’ We wanted to make a record you could pass down. There’s a lot of music out now that doesn’t feel like that.”

What I love the most about The Mountain Goats is that every album is a concept album, and their discography is massive. In 2002, John Darnielle released Tallahassee, the first Mountain Goats album from a major record label, the first with an official single, and the first featuring more players than just Darnielle. It draws on characters from earlier Mountain Goats works, the fan-named “Alpha Couple,” a married man and woman who are constantly on the verge of divorce. On this album, the Alpha Couple moves to a dilapidated house on Southwood Plantation Road in Tallahassee, Florida. With the house as a metaphor for their relationship, the pair grow more resentful of each other and eventually begin to drink themselves to death.

Arctic Monkeys’ First Foray Into Concepts Beyond Alex Turner’s Shifting Personas

You could argue that Arctic Monkeys have been making concept albums from the beginning, considering Alex Turner’s ever-changing personas. He went from the brash, baby-faced kid from their debut to the long-haired, horse-eyed lad from Humbug to the snarling greaser of AM. However, I’m of the opinion that Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino from 2018 is where Turner really started to play around with cohesive concepts.

The title track notably follows Mark, the proprietor of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, which is a hotel on the moon featuring a taqueria on the roof called the Information Action Ratio. Tranquility Base is a thematically and lyrically rich concept that took Arctic Monkeys into a completely new sound, pulling more from Turner’s side project, The Last Shadow Puppets. While the narrative is clear, I believe Turner is never more honest than when he’s writing concept albums. Tranquility Base is as much a science fiction love letter as a commentary on the music business, which would be explored more in their 2022 album The Car.

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