10 Greatest Concept Albums In Rock Music History

One of the primary complaints that people get about the emo genre is just how downtrodden it is. Since rock has always been about getting over your problems and having fun, what good is it when you have people with nothing better to do than complain about the messed up childhoods they had? If you were to put down the emo blinders though, some of the more macabre stories tend to have a better silver lining.

After becoming the kings of the emo genre, My Chemical Romance set their sights on something much bigger on the Black Parade, going for an aesthetic that put them on the level of the conceptual records that they loved as kids. Chronicling the life of a man stricken with terminal cancer, each of these songs plays out like a different period in his self mourning, whether it be talking about the afterlife on This Is How I Disappear to wondering where he's going to land at the end on House of Wolves and Mama.

Without giving away the surprise, Famous Last Words also serves as the last great mission statement of the record, letting people know that just because you have this kind of heaviness in your life doesn't mean that you have to keep carrying it for the rest of time. For an album that's centered around death for most of its runtime, it's musical heart is still beating.