10 Perfect Rock Concept Albums

It's hard to really describe the kind of intensity that was going on in a post 9/11 America. Even with the government's reasoning being flimsy, sending the nation into a war that most didn't want to fight left most Americans scared in their homes, as kids watched all of the carnage going on on the news everyday. System of a Down may have had the more pointed protest songs against George Bush at the time, but Green Day's American Idiot gave us the closest look at what that time actually felt like.

While the entire record kicks off with a protest against the war on the title track, the rest of the album has a much more operatic structure, following the lives of a bunch of kids just scraping by and trying to make sense of what the world is like. Through these cast of characters, we meet Jesus of Suburbia, who's snatched from Bush's Americanized neighborhoods and heads to the big city, where he adopts his alter ego St. Jimmy. Although things end up going well for a while with his girlfriend Whatsername, this love story was never going to end well, as she ditches him to move on with her life.

Even though rock albums tend to end on a high note, the final few minutes of this opera is absolutely heartbreaking, as Jesus continues to live the punk rock lifestyle before killing off St. Jimmy and settling for a desk job back home. It might not be the amazing ending that we were hoping for, but it's probably a lot closer to what most of us have to deal with every single day.