On the radio I hear many songs that end with a repeat of the chorus (in effect, a fade out). For example, Build Me Up Buttercup, Lion Sleeps Tonight, Hey Jude, etc.
My question is: are songs like these consciously decided upon by their artists to be “fade out” songs? In other words, during the original recording session, did these artists play the choruses a bunch of times and then end the song definitively, hoping that the song would be used in its entirety;
or keep playing repeats of the final chorus, expecting that radio airplay would cut their song down to a manageable length?
I know it’s a strange question, but I always wonder what kind of great music we’re missing out on because of the fade-out. Are fade-outs planned? Are there hidden endings to the songs that we’d never get to hear?
What generally happens is that the singers sing the chorus a couple or three times and the producer decides when and how quickly to fade out.
This, by the way, was considered to be the greatest thing about the Beatles’ Hey Jude – rather than fading out, the lads song just kept going and going.
And when the artist wraps up the song with a definite end, as when performing live, it’s called a “button.”
Now, I will request this thread to be moved to Cafe Society, where more experts may be found.
First of all, the artist rarely has complete control even in the studio, unless the artist paid for the studio time themselves (which is rare). Generally speaking, bigger name artists have more control, but even then sometimes not. One of Cheap Trick’s biggest hits, The Flame, was forced down the band’s throats. The artists had absolutely no control over what ended up on the record, and to this day they often refuse to even play it on stage.
Radio stations also make it pretty well known what they will or will not play. If a song has profanity in it, for example, certain radio stations will make it clear that they won’t play it, pretty much forcing the studio to release a censored version. Radio stations will also sometimes demand that the song not be over a certain time length. Sometimes the artist will record two (or more) versions of the song. Other times the studio will edit the song without the artist’s knowledge or permission. David Bowie’s song Heroes for example has an album version, which is longer, and a radio version, which was edited to be shorter and is missing an entire verse of lyrics. And that’s far from a unique case.
Back in the early 80’s, Genesis released a song called Abacab, which has a long instrumental playout at the end. Radio stations often faded this out. Radio stations have also often faded into songs that have long instrumental or other types of introductions.
Then again, sometimes the band will get to an instrumental playout, and will just play for a while. If you listen closely, sometimes they fade out and stop at the point where the musicians screw up.
If you search on youtube you can often find alternate versions of songs.
Nonsense. There is no great music being denied the public by radio stations fading out songs that weren’t intended to be faded out, and nothing you say contradicts that at all. Anybody can check that that’s true just by purchasing the original release.
Are there alternate versions of songs, shortened or otherwise altered for radio play? Of course. Where do these come from? The artist. Relations between artists and record companies are varied and complicated and you can find any example of anything you want in the 100 million of so songs that exist. But to claim as a general truth that songs get to radio in versions the artists have no say over is also nonsense. And completely irrelevant. Even in the most extreme examples you could find, the song got there exactly as the producer wanted, so you’re only pushing it back a level and the radio station is not part of the loop. Their record company may have wanted Cheap Trick to do a ballad (which happened to become their only #1 hit) but the band itself made the music, not the record company.
I’m pretty sure you’ll find that if a song has a “button” (thanks, kunilou) it will get played almost universally. A long fade-out may be truncated. Guess what? A dj sometimes talks over an instrumental opening! It happens! Even so, all radio comes with a disclaimer: No great music was harmed in the making in this radio broadcast.
I remember this being ubiquitous when I was a kid in the 60s and 70s. It really messed up my attempts to copy my favorite songs onto cassette tape, and I concluded that it was done for copyright protection.
… In fact, I even remember many 45rpm records being labeled not only with the duration of the song, but it also listed the duration of the instrumental opening. I always figured this was for the benefit of the DJs, who kept their voice-over going until the very last second of the instrumental opening.
I think two factors are that fade-outs work best with thoughtful or wistful songs, of which there are much fewer today, and also radio stations, to keep up the excitment levels want to run songs together without breaks, to the point of starting the next song before the first has completely ended, so you never hear the winding down of the first song…
I have a related question. When performing songs live, why do bands always insist on dragging out the ending of each song with endless guitar chords and drumming?
I once heard a recording where an artist (maybe Neil Young?) just strung together a whole bunch of those endings from live performances. It was one of the most irritating things I’ve ever heard.
Former '80s radio DJ here. Can confirm. All the records in the studio were marked with both the length of the song and the time before the vocals started (including a big :00 for ‘cold open’ songs that began with the vocals). It was exactly for that purpose - to let the DJs know exactly how long they could talk without going over the vocals.
This wasn’t for copyright protection, by the way. You wanted music playing to the maximum extent possible, so having a segment with just the jock talking and no music in the background was a no-no (except for going in or out of commercial breaks). These days, I notice on some stations they have generic filler music to play behind the DJ even leading into ad breaks, which just seems weird to me, but I’m old.
Timing was a key part of DJ-ing back in the day. Your ad breaks were set and of a non-negotiable length, so getting the songs of certain lengths in order so as to precisely hit a news break or the top-of-the-hour station ID was really a skill and an art - one I’m not too humble to say I was pretty good at. With everything being computerized and digitized these days, I doubt today’s DJs have much leeway to do that any more.
Combining the two themes of this thread, Don Imus, who currently hosts a morning show out of WABC in New York, regularly plays a clip from his early days where he perfectly times his recitation of the letters of the alphabet from A to X as a lead-in to the opening “Why” of “Build Me Up, Buttercup”.
Sorry, but I think engineer_comp_geek is 100% right. Only a tiny, tiny number of the most powerful artists have that level of control, normally the record companies control **everything **(they can sell the artists’ songs to dog food companies if they think its a good business decision). And the radio stations are just as much the record companies customers as the fans are (economically more so actually). The Beatles or Madonna might get a say in things, but the vast majority of artists don’t.
I don’t think I have ever, not even once, heard the full ‘outro’ to the ending of Fiona Apple’s hit *Criminal *on a radio station. Didn’t know it existed until I bought the CD…
Well this obviously isn’t true, or there wouldn’t be such a thing as a “radio edit”. Imagine my surprise when I bought Billy Joel’s album The Stranger, only to discover there’s a second verse in “Just the Way You Are” that I had never heard on the radio (“Don’t go tryin’/some new fashion/don’t change the color of your hair…”).
Speaking of Billy Joel, just because this is the only example I know of truly great music that was lost to a fadeout, there’s an extended version of “Zanzibar” on the My Lives album (a collection of B-sides, rarities, etc.) that’s a full 90 seconds longer than the album cut, and it’s all delicious trumpet solo.
It was interesting to me to hear the button at the end of “Tell Her About It.” It ends with a quick a capella repeat of the refrain. On the fade-out versions, they go to silence just as this is about to start. I wish they’d leave it in.
I had no idea there was a radio edit of this song. I just checked it out and it sounds weird to me missing that second verse. I’ve only heard it on the radio myself, but it seems the stations I would have heard it on play the full album version.