Your favourite concept albums not recorded by a 'Prog band' ?

Concept albums are usually associated with the prog genre but name some great concept albums recorded by none prog artists .

 

Not sure how prog is being defined here - or concept albums for that matter - but these acts produced quite a few concept-driven albums: Kraftwerk, Parliament, The Residents..

 

Lee Hazlewood - Trouble Is A Lonesome Town

 

Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy - Elton John

 

Lee Hazlewood, "Requiem for an Almost Lady"

 

Kevin Coyne & Dagmar Krause, "Babble"

 

Juarez by Terry Allen

 

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles.
I wouldn't consider it a real concept album, but if people consider The Kink's Village Green to be, then this definitely is.

 

Joni Mitchell's debut certainly qualifies.

 

The Stranglers
The Gospel According to the Meninblack

 

Some folk related concept albums:
Fairport Convention - Babbacombe Lee
Dransfield - The Fiddler's Dream
Horslips - The Tain/The Book Of Invasions
Albion Band - Lark Rise To Candleford
Ashley Hutchings - Rattlebone and Ploughjack/The Compleat Dancing Master
Peter Bellamy - The Transports

 

... and pretty much every album released by Ewan McColl.

 

Not a full album, but the Ninth Wave half of Hounds of Love by Kate Bush is probably my favourite musical narrative sequence.

 

Randy Newman Good Old Boys

 

Serge Gainsbourg Histoire de Melody Nelson

 

Emmylou Harris - The Ballad of Sally Rose

 

Frank Sinatra - Watertown

 

Well, Roy Wood was always on the fringe of prog, I suppose (he even got a Prog Award thingy a few years back) but Wizzard was, experimental I suppose, but first and foremost rock & roll. I don't know if this album is a concept album in the traditional sense, but there is definitely a common thread all the way through. I lump this together with Zappa & Mothers' exquisite Ruben and the Jets album which (and I'm risking my life here) is probably the one Zappa album I listen to the most. Whether or not Zappa is prog is a different kettle of fish.

 

Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile
Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

 

The Kinks - Arthur Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire
and
The Kinks - Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround (Part 1)

 

Judas Priest - Nostradamus

 

Tommy