Walls, animals and drones: concept albums and transmedia dystopic narratives in popular music

Popular music is a powerful and complex transmedia narrative form, composed by songs, performances, videos, movies and digital platforms. One of the most interesting expressions of musical transmedia narratives is the so-called dystopic concept album: a group of songs with recurring characters and connected events, used to represent dehumanized societies. In the song-centric digital landscape of streaming platforms, artists still produce concept albums: their narrative complexity shows the relevance of popular music in today’s media landscape. The concept album was born in the Sixties, and it was explored by those musicians who wanted to push forward the boundaries of a single song, by means of narratives that included recorded performances but also theatrical ones, movies, videos, and so on. The paper will focus on dystopian societies narrated by popular music through concept albums, analyzing examples such as Pink Floyd’s “Animals” (1977, based on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”) and “The wall” (1981) and, more recently, Muse’s “Drones” (2015).