Concept Album Quotes

I know it's hard for people to imagine a time when 'Hamilton' wasn't 'Hamilton,' but for years, it was just this little thing that I was telling people about that didn't make any sense to anybody as I was describing it. But I loved it.

The band that changed my life was The Who. It's hard to pick just one album, but if I had to pick the one that really showed me how things could be done, it's 'The Who Sell Out.' They really went to town on that, doing something that no one had ever done before.

You know, I'm a fan of Laurie Anderson. One of my favorite records is 'The Ugly One With the Jewels,' a spoken-word record. It's an extraordinary album.

I wrote a lot of lyrics in prison, but they'd all be like, 'Crawls upon the shoulders, hatred in the eyes.' I wrote about 50 songs in there that were all about jail. I've come out and thought, 'I've only served eight weeks; I can't really write a concept album about jail.'

I was talking to my dad about the stuff he grew up listening to, and 'Operation: Mindcrime' is a record that he had always talked about around the house. He always talked about it as the 'greatest concept album of all time.' One day, I started listening to it, and it just hit me. I was like, 'These songs are all hits. They're all huge songs.'

The great music for so many artists - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

Normally when I do an album, I have a concept behind it.

I don't want to put 12 singles on an album. I want to make a story, a little movie.

I grew up in the era of the concept album. What I do now is pick up on singles, and they are their own complete stories; you don't necessarily have to hear the rest of the album because I don't think albums are created like that anymore. They get songs from all over the place.

I'm doing a record that has a story that runs through all of the songs, and then there is also a film that goes along with it.

When you're doing a concept album, it's easy. It's like a movie: you already know what you're dealing with.

Two songs I like are 'High Flying Adored' and 'Another Suitcase Another Hall,' both from 'Evita.'

When you're putting together a concept album, it's all about the flow and the story.

I'm gonna stay an album guy. In fact, concept albums are really blowing my mind right now, because if you want to promote an album, think about it - a concept album might be the way to go.

Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.

The Black Parade only has two songs left. Then you'll have to deal with the likes of My Chemical Romance. Personally...I think their language is atrocious and they don't know how to dress.

I was listening 'Plastic Ono Band,' the John Lennon album a lot, and that might have had some inspiration on me.

I wore out the Broadway 'Tommy' recording. I just loved it.

It's quite an easy way to write a concept album about love. Everything boils down to love in the end.

'Evita' was four pieces of slick paper and a record album. It's the most scary, to sit down and dictate a musical scene by scene. It was a musical unlike anything I'd ever seen before myself.

All I'm really interested in musically is trying to make concept albums. Serving a larger sum than the parts.

There have been many socially conscious concept albums. I wanted to make a 'social consciousness' concept album disguised as a country record.

My private joke about 'Luke Cage' is that it's a bulletproof version of 'Lemonade,' and that, essentially, it's a concept album that has a video component.

Aqualung is one that my brother turned me onto. It wasn't that hard-rocking, but Martin Barre had a really good sound. He knew what he was doing.

There are so many ingredients that are contained in 'The Wall' that were not necessarily contained in other Pink Floyd records, particularly following on from 'Animals,' which was very spare and sparse. Production on it was much more massive, the complexity of the recording was much more intense.