In popular music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical". Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing to a single overall theme or unified story. This is in contrast to the practice of an artist or group releasing an album consisting of a numbe...
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In popular music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical". Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing to a single overall theme or unified story. This is in contrast to the practice of an artist or group releasing an album consisting of a number of unconnected (lyrically or otherwise) songs performed by the artist.
In the world of musical theatre, there is a separate and distinct form of concept album known as the album musical, in which the performers are playing characters in a story, a type of recording which encompasses such "rock operas" as The Who's Tommy and The Wall by Pink Floyd.
What could very loosely be considered the first concept albums were released in the late 1930s by singer Lee Wiley on the Liberty Records label, featuring eight songs on four 78s by showtune...
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