Fifty Years of the Concept Album in Popular Music: From The Beatles to Beyoncé

In the realm of popular music, where the 'concept album' has long been a contested and elusive entity, Eric Wolfson's Fifty Years of the Concept Album in Popular Music: From The Beatles to Beyonc (2024) emerges as a significant contribution to ongoing debates among scholars and critics.The book guides readers through the evolution of the concept album, from its nascent emergence in the late 1960s to now, through five eras defined by Wolfson: The Founding Era (1967-9), The Golden Era (1970-4), The Modern Era (1975-89), The Postmodern Era (1990-9) and the New Millennium .Widening its scope, the book explores the multifaceted ways in which the 'concept album' has been employed.Scholarly discussions on the concept album have primarily focused on progressive rock as the genre that has most significantly and extensively shaped its development (Letts 2010; Burns 2016).Wolfson acknowledges the predominance of progressive rock yet offers a more diverse overview of the concept album, analyzing twenty-five albums across a wide variety of genres.Starting with The Beatles' Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) and ending at Beyonc's Lemonade (2012), the book presents an alternative history to the concept album and thus, raises the questions of whose work receives recognition as a concept album and why.These questions, however, are only briefly addressed in the chapter on Janelle Mone's The ArchAndroid (2010) where Wolfson reflects on how concept albums have long been understood as the domain of white, male musicians