Your favorite 'concept' album


I'm not a concept album fan, however there are a few I've gone down the rabbit hole with. My personal fave, is '10,000 Years' by The Honeydogs. The backstory & lyrics are so vivid, and futuristic, it never fails to reveal something new to me. Even the bandleader said at times he's not sure what it's about.

Fascinating info & interview in the url. Check it out! 

Any others? 
128x128zufan
Patricia Barber - Mythologies
A song-cycle based on Greek mythology where each of the 11 mythological characters in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is fleshed out in music.
@tonykay  - I just put "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" on the TT, sat down and fired up AudiogoN and saw your post. Agreed, both of those Elton John albums are fantastic!
Elton John-"Tumbleweed Connection" and "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" Both are great albums, a little dated, but great!
I like Tool "Laterallus"  It is much easier to follow after you see them do the album in it's entirety.  I could repeat many others and it makes me want to revisit many of the albums here. 

Great topic and great answers
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Marvin Gaye / What's Going On?
Willie Nelson / The Red Headed Stranger
Van Morrison / Astral Weeks
Stevie Wonder / Innervisions
Robbie Fulks / Couples in Trouble
Bruce Springsteen / Nebraska
Just wanted to say YES on the Honeydogs album, @scott_w !  I've been a fan since that sucker came out, and you are not only the first other person I've heard praise it, you're the first other person I've met who's heard it or even heard of it.
My top four:
Quadrophenia
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders for Mars
S.F. Sorrow (baylinor72 knows!)
@zerofox,

Quadrophenia is THE teen concept album.

A friend of my brother’s bought into the whole scene when the film came out in 1979. I still remember him slagging off the ’plastic mods’.

Unfortunately by then, Punk etc, Pete Townshend was then seen as ancient history.

Ha! What did we know?
Neal Diamond "Tap Root Manuscript" side 2, way before Paul Simon's "Graceland".
+1 for Operation Mindcrime. I need to give that another listen. It has been a while. 
Captain Fantastic is my favorite Elton/Taupin album 
  
2112 also, but Quadrophenia is my favorite.
My definition of a concept album is not just one in which a particular theme or concept is explored but also one the I get lost in and that I would prefer to listen to as a whole. I also feel that this should be the intent of the artist. Lots of albums "work" as a cohesive collection of songs (Aja - Steely Dan) but don't fit my idea of a concept album. I look for almost a symphonic structure.

Just my take on it and some of the ones I list might not even fit my own definition.

A few that I don't think have been mentioned:

Astral Weeks - Van Morrison. My favorite concept album and one of my favorite of all albums.
Vedon Fleece -Van Morrison. Not as "conceptual" as Astral Weeks and not as good....but still good.

Morning Phase - Beck. To me, a true concept album that even has recurring themes throughout like a symphony.
Sea Change - Beck. Not as mature or cohesive as Morning Phase.

Khruangbin- Con Todo El Mundo. Superb and NEW! Not many solid concept albums coming out these days.

Lay It Down - Cowboy Junkies. Maybe?

White City - Pete Townshend


Agree with some already mentioned:

Soul Cages - Sting. Very thematically cohesive. Well recorded too.

Wish You Were Here- Pink Floyd. A concept album by every definition of the word as is everything from DSOTM onward but I think WYWH is their best and most cohesive as a concept album. Animals I'd place second. Not saying those are their best albums, just best in terms of the "concept" idea. The Wall is epic and I love it....but maybe a bit too epic. It can be a little tiresome in a Wagnerian way.

Rush is tough. I love Rush. Most of their albums up through Suburbs (I never liked their later stuff) are strongly conceptual and thematic but I don't know of any of their albums that carry the concept/theme through the whole album. If I had to pick one I'd say Hemispheres.


Titus Andronicus - "The Monitor"

Great concept album. My 17 year old son turned me onto it. Man, that kid's got great taste in music......
King diamond Abagail, the eye, abagail II, the puppet master, 
The graveyard, Them,  many cross lines with each other.
the man is a genius!

Iron Maiden 7th son
queensryche operation mind rime
iced earth. Night of the storm rider!

 There’s more, but that’s all that comes to mind now.


Moondog....Double Columbia album ....By Moondog....

The viking of the 5th street New-York and founder before Reich and Glass of the minimalism in music....

I listen to it for 45 years....
Yeah, I may be stating the obvious here, but the whole idea of pop/jazz concept albums owes itself to classical music.  After all what else is a symphony, concerto, opera or song cycle?
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The Great Adventure by Neal Morse Band. (and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway of course)
Elton John, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy! Depicts the journey of one of the greatest song writing partnerships of our pop culture.
Quadrophenia
Tommy
Any Floyd released inclusive between Meddle and The Wall
Greendale (underrated Neil Young album)
Terrapin Station
Days of Future Passed
I haven't seen my favorite mentioned yet, so here goes...
Genesis- The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

Also as others have mentioned:

ELP- Pictures at an Exhibition
Supertramp-Crime of the Century
Pink Floyd - The Wall, DSOM, wish you were here 
Rush - 2112, Farewell to Kings
Moody Blues - Days of future past
The Who- Tommy
Rick Wakeman - six wives




I forgot to mention the truly excellent Blue Sky Mining by Midnight Oil. A very special and moving work.
No mention yet of one of my favorites: Elton John “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy”

10 Yes - Close to the Edge

9 Alan Parsons - Tales of Mystery and Imagination

8 McD & Giles - McDonald and Giles

7 Moody Blues - In Search of the Lost Chord

6 Sting - Soul Cages

5 Alan Parsons - Air

4 Supertramp - Crime of the Century

3 Sting - Mercury Falling

2 Pink Floyd - Animals

1 Eagles - Desperado


Tim


@pgaulke, I would say a concept album is one that carries a consistent theme from beginning to end, like Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys (another all-time concept album) develops several themes around innocence and the loss of it – the innocence of youth, post-war America, American family life, lost love. By the end, the theme of the concept has been developed sufficiently so that the way you look at it is not the same as when the album started, for example, "Caroline, No" in the Beach Boys example. 

For those interested, the Smile boxset is still available through Amazon. Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks started working on this musical imagination on the subject of Manifest Destiny (look it up ;-) in 1966, and closed it down in mid-'67. It is the great "lost work" in Rock 'n' Roll history, Brian's follow-up to the Pet Sounds album.

The boxset contains every second of the recordings Brian and Van Dyke were able to get on tape before Brian collapsed. You can read the details on Smile in two chapters in the great book Outlaw Blues by Paul Williams, which were originally published in Crawdaddy magazine as the Smile recordings were being made.

Smile may just change your life, musically. It would have been a masterpiece had it been completed; even unfinished it is astonishing. It is not legendary for no good reason. 

+1 on Operation Mindcrime. Probably more relevant now than when it came out in the 80s. 
Carmen Gomes Inc.  'Up Jumped The Devil' 
24bit DXD ;https://www.soundliaison.com/index.php/677-up-jumped-the-devil-carmen-gomes-inc
Redbook CD and WAV; https://carmengomes.bandcamp.com/
By framing each of Robert Johnson’s songs with small instrumentalminiatures, Carmen Gomes Inc. have created an album that sounds like an imaginary road movie. Listening one perceives Robert walking late at night, en route in the Mississippi Delta, reflecting back on his life.The low A, 27.5 Hz, from the bowed down tuned double bass representing the Mississippi night, the drums creating the sounds surrounding the night and the guitar being Robert’s mind.
Ok Computer by Radiohead is the ultimate concept album for me. A few others that may not be full-on concept albums but seem to have a common theme from beginning to end are Suburbs by Arcade Fire, Dear Science by TV on the Radio, College Dropout by Kanye West, and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauryn Hill.