...about Song Endings

1. The Rock and Roll Finish (Strokus Cockus)

This is the way that real men end their songs. It’s simply not enough to write a melody and a beat, then add some lyrics over the top. That’s for girls.

Normally it’s the drummer who starts one of these. Not happy sitting at the back and keeping to the beat, this is him cycling past a group of hot chicks and popping a wheelie on his Raleigh Chopper. It’s pointless, self-indulgent and brilliantly awful.

The best ones add a verve and energy that’s necessary for the song, because there’s frankly no other way out.

The worst ones change key half way through, refusing to budge like that mould on your backyard fence. If you’re really unlucky, a 4-minute bass solo will sprout up from it like a disgusting, phallic-shaped toadstool.

2. The Fade Out (Disappearus Patheticus)

This is the cowards way out. If you can’t be bothered to think up an actual proper end, don’t just turn the volume down you lazy rotters. (Somewhere in this universe there’s a ghoulish netherworld where Paradise City just peters out with a wet, pathetic fade...)

It’s a good job film directors don’t have the same lackadaisical attitude. What if The Godfather has just faded to black before the end? Imagine The Shawshank Redemption ending with Morgan Freeman’s dulcet tones declaring that “Andy Dufresne suddenly woke up and it had all been a crazy dream.”

If you start something, finish it properly. People who fade out their songs are the same people who abandon their kids.

3. The False Ending (Endinga Interruptus)

“What shall we do at the end?”

“Right guys, let’s just keep playing this same riff for AGES. Then when it’s time to stop, we’ll carry on for a bit longer. Then it’ll be definitely time to stop but that’s what the kids will be expecting so we’ll do the opposite and keep playing it! What? No, the same riff! Yeah, that really shit riff that I was just talking about! Keep playing it again and again.”

“Then, we’ll stop. Suddenly. And as we can hear everyone breathe a sigh of relief that it’s over, we’ll start it up again!”

The false ending is the bore at your party who takes ages to leave, and then comes back because he’s forgotten his coat.

(NOTE: None of the above applies if you shout, ‘Wham-bam, thank-you mam’ before the riff to Suffragette City restarts. Obviously.)

4. Fade Out, Fade Back In, Then Fade Out Again (Evilearus Maximus)

Combining two of the worst ways to end a song is an odd choice and always sounds like a stray cat has flounced across the mixing desk.

As Neil Young once famously quipped, ‘it’s better to burn out out than to fade out, fade back in and then fade out again’ although this was probably in reference to his hair dye.

Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others by The Smiths actually begins like this and I like to enhance my enjoyment by imagining Morrissey and Marr exchanging Chinese burns in the studio over their disagreement of the final mix.

But I’ll let them off with that because I’m a hypocrite.

5. The Please Mix Me Finish (Biggus Deckus)

I know pretty much every house tune ends with a singular beat but there’s nothing quite as desperate as a spectacularly mediocre dance track that starts to throw all sorts of crazy noises at you as it enters the home straight.

It may as well jump off the turntable and start running hands down it’s body while giving you the eye.

Go on you dirty boy. Mix me. Or I will die.

But there’s something darkly satisfying about leaving the beat to thump itself out into eerie silence like the death rattle of an attention seeking Tamagotchi.

Now, please excuse me while I go and twat a load of cymbals and waggle my head around a bit...



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