It might have been one particular song, but we'll never know. I tried it on my SUSE box with Wine running emplode, and successfully removed the album by selecting the icon in the left hand pane and then hitting the red "X" to delete.

I've since learned that there's no need to delete an album in this way. I can select all the tracks in that album in the right hand pane, and delete them. Then, emplode gets rid of the album icon in the left hand pane for me.

Baby steps!