A cohesive concept from start to finish. In a business where singles dominate, there is something to be said for an artist who chooses to give the chart-making model of the music industry the middle finger and plays the game putting our albums. Some might say that albums are dead now, but I still think there is beauty in the well thought out story from the first song to the last when curating a record.
Sturgill Simpson is an artist who does not play the singles game and prefers to release concept projects. While not all of his records are concept records, Simpson touched on how he focused on this early on in his career. In an interview with Qobuz after the release of his Johnny Blue Skies record,
Passage Du Desir , Simpson noted that that project did not have a definitive narrative, which led the outlet to ask Simpson if he considered his earlier records concept albums.
"Some of those were definitely. Some of those were, you know, conceptual. One was definitely a story, front to beginning, and a lot were just songs. I mean, I write all the time, constantly, but you know, to make a record... I'm not interested in really making singles, which is pretty indicative of my intelligence level because, you know, praying to a dead business model, making albums, but just a collection of songs that cohesively feel like they were from the same moment or same headspace or they occupy a similar wheelhouse, you know." While Simpson believes a concept album doesn't have to have the same story written through each single but rather common ideas from the headspace at the time of making it, one of his records,
Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, is renowned for its poetic storytelling from start to finish. The groundbreaking record was a concept from the production aspect, and through the storytelling Simpson showcases through the lyrics. At the height of "bro-country," Simpson released a record that single-handedly changed the perspective of country music. Ray Charles’ 1962 album,
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, inspired the boundary-pushing record.
"So Metamodern was really incorporating elements of music from country music from the '50s all the way through '60s psychedelia. And then we even experimented with like tape manipulation, trying to mimic what you might hear a dubstep artist do with computers, but we were using analog equipment and instrumentation and back masking. And just getting weird because, honestly, I only did that because I had a baby on the way, and my career hadn't really taken off yet. So I thought that record would be the last time I ever got to record music until I had to go get a real job. So we just... there were no rules. Nothing mattered. And I think that's why that album got made the way it did. And that's weirdly the one that launched my career." Without Simpson thinking that
Metamodern Sound In Country Music would be his last album, who knows what it would have sounded like? But I think the collective can thank his pregnant wife for lighting a creative spark the industry had not seen before. Stu essentially picked the lock that made other country artists go, "Oh!" His sound on that record allowed artists like Stapleton to crack onto the scene. Even though we live in a world of singles, something must be said about the artists who still curate concept records. And no one does a concept record like Sturgill Simpson. I wish we could go back to when albums were listened to in full more often and artists cared about telling a story through the tracklist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwm5KqggwZY
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