Saturday Hot-Take: Concept Albums Were Peak Music Nerd Culture

Critics often called them pretentious. I call them courageous. In an era when everyone else was chasing radio hits, these bands said, “No, we’re going to tell a 70-minute story about dystopian society, or a Puerto Rican street kid’s spiritual journey through New York, or four sides of oceanic mysticism.” That level of artistic swagger is rare today