As great as “Build Me Up, Buttercup” is, I find it mildly annoying that the song modulates upward just as it fades out.
Well, I came in here to say any song that fades out at all. I mean, I don’t let it ruin a song for me, but c’mon, musicians, it’s such a cop-out. Learn how to write an ending!
The ending of this song is incongruent because almost the entire song really soft a mellow but by the end the singer is belting really powerfully and that last note in particular is extremely and takes your breath away:
You must get pissed, then, when Genesis fades out some of their songs!
(they certainly didn’t make a habit of it, to their credit) (especially earlier on)
Nah, like I said, I don’t let it ruin the song for me. Except… the live version of “Supper’s Ready” on Seconds Out makes me grumble a bit. That’s the only LIVE song I can think of that “fades out!”
Reminds me of a quip by the late great Glen Campbell: “Never play it perfect. If you do, they’ll expect it perfect every time from now on.”
Not disappointing exactly, but annoying-- especially after repeated listenings: Grand Funk Railroad’s ‘Closer To Home (I’m Your Captain)’. The entire back half of the over 10 minute song consisted of the singer repeating the line ‘I’m getting closer to my home’ approximately 157 times. When it was an AOR radio staple and it came on my car radio, I’d quickly change the station at the halfway mark.
For many years, I thought of it as a metaphor for an impersonal “Molochmaschine”-type entity that kidnapped her husband. More recently, I decided that it was just what she said: a big yellow taxi that her husband called to take him away, as he was leaving her (possibly for a woman who didn’t mind DDT as much as she hated spots on her apples).
I never got the feeling that Billy was a volunteer in the Army; more like he was a conscript, and his girl only wanted for him to come home alive. That she got a fucking letter telling her that her man had died a “hero” was cold comfort in the face of the fact that he had died at all.
Hey, deejays need a bathroom break now and then, too!
The outro even stands on its own, and I like it more than the rest of the song. Particularly after Clapton unplugged in 1991 and turned “Layla” into schlocky soft rock. The outro was on the Goodfellas soundtrack, without the rest of the song, as it was used like that so brilliantly in the film.
Anthrax’s “N.F.B. (Dallabnikufesin)” ends abruptly and stupidly, but as it’s supposedly a parody of metal ballads anyway, I suppose it’s kind of the point.
When I bought Blonde on Blonde at the time of its release, the ending of Sooner Or Later One of Must Know faded out. Imagine my surprise when, years later, I bought it on CD and that song had a real ending. My point is, it must have been faded out in production, I doubt it was Dylan’s decision to do so.
Perhaps a bit more surprisingly, “And your Bird Can Sing” ends on the 4th.
Both Lennon songs… he was no respecter of convention…
And in both cases it works just fine!
And the next track on Revolver, “For No One,” ends on a suspended 4th.
I’ve always heard it as a very bitter laugh, and thus appropriate to the song.
Hate Allman’s whiney guitar on the outro. It’s like nails on a blackboard to me.
I thought more like mewling kittens.
Didn’t I read somewhere that (future psycho) Jim Gordon’s latter half of “Layla” was ripped off from Bonny and Delaney? Been looking, can’t seem to locate it.
I’d say any song that does the fade out…like they couldn’t figure out how to end the song so it just goes on and on…
I like Blood, Sweat and Tears’ “Spinning Wheel a lot,” jazzy interludes notwithstanding, but if I wanted to listen to “O du lieber Augustin”, I would listen to “O du lieber Augustin”. And I never want to listen to “O du lieber Augustin.”
Sometimes you’d rather they just fade out rather than trying to write a brilliant ending. Consider the Doors winding up a powerhouse saxophone solo
With a soap commercial
ISTM that back in the day the way all songs began was a fade-in to a repetitive instrumental chorus. They faded out the same way but sometimes to a repetitive vocal chorus on top of the instrumental one.
That was simply the style everyone óf the customers wanted and everyone expected. So that’s the standard everyone wrote to. One of the side effects of that was a song could be trimmed by up to maybe 45 seconds by cutting off part of either the front, back, or both. Such that it could be fitted precisely into a varying sized time slot.
Artistic or musicological merit has nothing to do with it; it was simply a convention within a profit-making business.
The style has since changed. I forget the guy’s name, but he invented the modern song format which is heavily compressed, starts loud, and gets to the catchy chorus within the first 5 seconds to match the attention span of the audience who clicks away all but instantly unless the song has already hooked them.
Different convention, but equally normative for the folks making music to make money. Your modern song either does it the new way or is ignored. The same dynamic obtained in the 1970s: comply with then-current convention or be ignored.
IMO it isn’t any deeper than that.
On that note, everyone hates on Steve Miller’s Take the Money and Run for the sloppy rhyming in the third verse (Texas/facts is/justice/taxes), but nobody ever talks about how the song seems to skip like two or three verses afterward and jump right to the denouement. We spend all this clumsy rhyming establishing Billie Mack as a character… and then what? The outlaws just get away and then the song’s over.
It’s one of classic rock’s greatest lyrical sins since Bernie Taupin refused to tell us what was wrong with Daniel his brother who is older than him.
There’s a significant number of songs that start with the vocals and then the instruments join in. Best example is Doo Wop, before electric guitars with distortion pedals, with a strong focus on vocal harmony.
They didn’t need to trim songs until the LP, with it’s 20+ minutes of indulgent possibility, became popular. Having only ~3 minutes a side on a 45 meant you had keep it tight to begin with.
Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound?