This time last year, Peter Brewis was feeling down. Despite critical plaudits for their second album, his band, Field Music, had failed to make a breakthrough, and he was running out of money. He decided to put the band on a sabbatical, moved into a new home in Newcastle, threw out his television, computer and radio, and cancelled the papers. Then he started to write.

A week later, he had the raw material for The Week That Was, a contemporary concept album about the influence of mass media on modern society, structured as an imaginary crime thriller in the style of the novelist Paul Auster.

Around the same time, the Mancunian musician Jim Noir was putting together an album telling the life story of an astronaut, Commander Jameson, looking back on his life as he drifts through space.

Meanwhile, Neon Neon — the alter ego of Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals and the American DJ Boom Bip — were working on Stainless Style, an ambitious opus about the rise and cocaine-fuelled fall of the playboy sports-car-pioneer John DeLorean, performed in the style of 1980s synth-pop.

The evidence is incontrovertible — concept albums are back. “When I set out to make a concept album, I was worried it might get associated with those silly 1970s ones,” admits Brewis. “But there are no 10-minute organ solos — and definitely no capes.”

They might have become the object of mockery, but there was a time when concept albums were the mark of credibility for a band. In the early 1970s, prog-rockers such as Genesis and Yes devoted themselves to triple albums inspired by myths and legends, with cover art by Roger Dean. In fact, concept albums date further back than that, possibly to the pianist Pete Johnson, whose 1940s album Pete

Johnson’s Housewarmin’ featured guest pianists joining him in his “new home”. Some point to Frank Sinatra’s themed albums, especially his 1955 collection In the Wee Small Hours.

It was the 1960s and the arrival of recreational drugs as a lifestyle accessory, however, that produced the first real concept albums. LSD provoked ever dafter fantasies that became spun out into song cycles, suites and, yes, concept albums.These were times when rock musicians sought serious credibility by incorporating “classical” elements into their music, turning to literature and legend for inspiration, introducing shifting time signatures, narrators and characters into a themed collection of songs.

From here it was a short step to the “rock opera”, begun, depending on your view, either by the original Nirvana’s self-styled “science- fiction pantomime”, The Story of Simon Simopath (1967), or SF Sorrow (1968) by the Pretty Things. Arguments will also rage over whether or not Sgt Pepper is a concept album (not really — it’s just the Beatles in fancy dress).

By the 1970s, with the popularity of prog-rock supergroups, the concept album had become a rite of passage, synonymous with innovation and ambition. Or, if you prefer, with pretentious themes, pompous musical arrangements, impenetrable lyrics and outlandish costumes. The 1980s and 1990s were largely concept-free areas, but Mike Skinner reclaimed the format from its sword-and-sorcery predecessors with A Grand Don’t Come for Free, and suddenly the floodgates have opened. So here we present, in chronological order, 15 of the most notable concept albums.

The Mothers of Invention: Freak Out! (1966) The debut of Frank Zappa and his wildly experimental band was one of the first double albums. Musically, it has more in common with the classical avant garde than pop.

The Kinks: The Village Green Preservation Society (1968) A sentimental homage to English village life, Ray Davies’s album is steeped in sentiment and nostalgia. Nobody quite does English whimsy like the Kinks.

Explore Music

• Proms

• Festivals

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

Editor's choice

• Are Glasvegas the new Oasis?
• Proms Podcast with Stephen Hough
• Vote for musical perfection