From Black Parade to Tapestry - 5 Transformative Albums

Recently, I started listening to the podcast “Hit Parade.” It’s ostensibly about how certain songs or artists became hits, but really is a “history of popular music,” with those specific songs providing focal points for each episode. Listening to it made me think through what albums I thought were seminal in popular music. I’m primarily familiar with rock, so that is the focus of this list. Also, I only listed five albums that I consider groundbreaking when there are literally hundreds.. I recommend the Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” if you want something more comprehensive.

Here are my top five transformative albums, in chronological order. 

The Mikado - Gilbert and Sullivan 
It is pretty weird to stick a late Victorian light opera on a list that is otherwise rock ‘n roll, but hear me out. Gilbert and Sullivan, and the light opera itself, is the key bridge between opera and the modern musical. You can’t have Rogers and Hammerstein without Gilbert and Sullivan. They paved the way for the modern musical, which is one of the defining genres of the mid-century United States. And the separation between musicals and rock/pop is fuzzy, especially back in the ‘60s. After all the Beatles covered “‘Til There Was You” from The Music Man, and Herman’s Hermits covered “Leaning on a Lamppost” from Me and My Girl. 

Furthermore, Gilbert and Sullivan have cemented themselves in the cultural consciousness, and deserve credit for that as well. The phrase “Grand Poobah” is thanks to them, for example. Admittedly, there was no reason to pick Mikado over Pirates of Penzance or HMS Pinafore, but it’s my favorite of those three. 

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearst’s Club Band - The Beatles
It’s absurd to have any list of influential albums without mentioning Sgt. Pepper. The Beatles record is widely considered the best album of all time. Rolling Stone calls it the “most important rock ‘n roll album ever made.” Now to be clear, this isn’t my favorite Beatles album - that would be Revolver (Which is number 3 on The Rolling Stones list). But Sgt. Pepper not only defined the concept album, but it showcases everything the Beatles can do, musically, as a coherent whole. 

Personally, I think the lesser known songs are excellent and wonderful little stories. “She’s Leaving Home” is the lyrical, melancholy de facto follow-up to Eleanor Rigby. Lovely Rita has one of my favorite starting bars of a Beatles song - the drum intro is amazing. Just as the last song is titled, the songs are each “A day in the life.” They are vignettes, and brilliant ones at that. Even better-known songs like “When I’m 64” can be seen as a part of that format. And that’s not even getting into songs like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” It is a truly incredible album. 

Tapestry - Carol King 
Carol King is one of the best songwriters of the 20th century. It’s also a little depressing to note that of the five entries on this list, only one of them features a woman. But setting that issue aside, Tapestry is a truly breathtaking album. It is emotional, and I mean that as high praise. You cannot listen to a song like “You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman)” and not feel her music and lyrics inside of you. The music and King herself are no frills, no window dressing, just depth and amazing music. 

Carol King, and this album, defined the female singer-songwriter. It wasn’t just Dylan who could do it. Carol King obviously wasn’t the only one - Joni Mitchell comes to mind for example - but in my opinion at least, she made it mainstream. As my mom put it, there would be no Adele without Carol King and Tapestry.  

Nevermind - Nirvana
If ever an album defined a sound, it’s this one. Grunge, and particularly Nevermind is different than its predecessors in metal and heavy rock because it is emotional and dark. The Hair Metal of the ‘80s is fun. It’s about rebellion and rocking out, and being awesome - it’s “Calling Dr Love” by Kiss and while “Living on a Prayer” deals with some harsh themes, it is ultimately a hopeful anthem. Nevermind, conversely is an intensely emotional album. It’s rocking out to deal with angst and frustration and how hard life can be. It’s men dealing with their feelings. Listen to a song like Lithium and you can feel the pain Kurt Cobain is feeling. Nevermind opens the door for the ‘90s wave of angsty punk and pop-punk, like 3rd Eye Blind, Green Day, and (I would argue) Nine Inch Nails. And, in turn, the “emo” incarnation as it was called in the mid-2000s. 

The Black Parade - My Chemical Romance
The Black Parade came out the same year I graduated high school. It’s one of the few albums I have on vinyl (yes, my hipster-ness strikes again) and I really love this album. 

The Black Parade is a confluence of the brief revival of the concept album in the mid-aughts and the musical legacy of emotion-driven hard rock of groups like Nirvana. It made everything bigger, more intense, and honestly, very complex and interesting musically. Just listen to “Welcome to the Black Parade” for the music itself - it’s truly impressive. 

The Black Parade is on this list not just because I love it, but because it shows the double-edged sword of rock and roll. Earnestness is in general something modern American culture has a hard time with, as are heavy topics. And Black Parade is unabashedly earnest - it is raw emotion and gritty, and while it is big - both in music and execution - some songs can be borderline understated, like The End. But it is intense, and admittedly dark, while being genuinely itself. This makes it both incredibly appealing to people, but also uncool and open to ridicule as it is simply too much. It’s just over the edge of acceptable angst, even for hard rock. I think that it was overwhelming to the point that the music industry and rock decided to step back from the intensity and get “safer” after this album, for lack of a better word. Punk and indie rock that I heard in the subsequent years was certainly a pullback from this style. 

Which really is a shame, because I honestly think this album is brilliant, and having music as a way for both listeners and the musicians themselves contend with emotions is, I think, a good thing.

Conclusion

These are only a few albums that defined modern music. But I truly think they were transformative, and genre-defining. Also they are all just great albums. Ones I will happily listen to over and over again. Because the best thing about these albums is that they are awesome. Remove context and cultural importance and they are still amazing and worth listening to. And that’s what’s truly the most important thing about them.