In popular music, a concept album is an album which is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical". Most often they are pre-planned (conceived) and with all songs contributing to a single overall theme or unified story, this plan or story being the concept. This is in contrast to the standard practice of an artist or group releasing an album consisting of a number of unconnected songs performed by the artist. Given that the suggestion of something as vague as an overall mood often tags a work as being a concept album, a precise definition of the term proves problematic.
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.
In the contemporary rock era (from 1966 onwards - the point at which critics started to...
full article at wikipedia
