Closing Time

Alright.  My first real post will be about album closers.  I have always enjoyed the intricacies  of putting together mixtapes, and i can only imagine the pressures artists feel when creating an album full of their own music, lyrics, and ideas. Quick sidenote: when i say artist, i mean artist.  Not a production team.  Not a producer.  Not a manager.  Not a pop star singing someone else's words.  An artist. There.  I'm glad we cleared that up.  

This may or may not be the case today, what with all the instant gratification of spotify and you tube and itunes allowing listeners to listen to just one song from an album.  When i was in high school, mp3s were still a few years away, and CDs were still the main delivery vessel for music.  Hell, even cassettes were still useful for mixtapes, bootlegs, and low income home recording.  What this meant to the listener: You may only want to hear this one song, but you have to buy an entire album to listen to it.  What this meant to the artist: NO SLACKING.  WRITE A GODDAMN ALBUM WORTH OF MUSIC.  NOW.

"The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules"- High Fidelity.  A bit of hyperbole there, but it still rings true.  If you are making a mixtape or playlist specifically with someone other than yourself as the main audience, you have to think about how the songs will speak to them as a whole.  You cant just put your most popular song right at the beginning of the album (Unless you are Reel Big Fish, then it is okay) without risking losing the listeners attention.  This, like all rules, is not always the case, but as a general rule it works pretty well.  Put your single a few tracks deep so that people have to get to it.  Start your album off strong with something upbeat, wait a little bit for your monster ballad (say about track 5 or 6), and finish up with something epic.  

I will get around to the other aspects of mixtape/playlist/album song order in a future post, because that i just too much fun not to talk about.  This post is specifically about the last track of an album.  That epic swan song before the albums fades into nothing.  I have a few favorites that i think are great examples of how to properly end an album.

First on the list: Goodbye, Sky Harbor by Jimmy Eat World from the album Clarity.
In case you haven't heard this song before: 

Not the greatest quality audio, but hey, what are ya gonna do...  Anyway, what makes this song such a great way to close out an album?  A few things.  First, the song proper (0:00-3:00) is well written, complex, emotional and heartfelt.  There are some theories on what the song is about in the Jimmy Eat world Fanbase, but the short story is that it is about leaving Sky Harbor Airport in Arizona with some allusions to the book "A Prayer for Owen Meany".  Beautiful harmonies, intertwining syncopation, all together a great song.  and then it keeps going.  for thirteen more minutes. The second thing that makes this song so epic is the extended vocal looping and overdubbing that builds and builds until it reaches maximum velocity.  The song builds, then relents, then builds again, then relents, and so on until it is not even the same song anymore.  It just keeps you listening for small changes.  Completely engrossing.  Why is this a good song to finish the album?  It takes all of the feelings of the album as a whole and gives it a proper send off.  Clarity is by far one of Jimmy Eat World's best albums, and this song damn near wraps it with a bow and writes your name on it.  Musical catharsis.  


Next up: Theme Song/Play Doh by The Aquabats from the album Fury of the Aquabats

First video-Theme song  Second Video-Play Doh

The Aquabats are a ska/new wave band fronted by the guy who created Yo Gabba Gabba.  Seriously.  Also, Travis Barker played drums on this album, so they got that going for them.On the record, there is also a secret track that kicks in after about a few minutea of silenceafter "Theme Song" ends.  It is a re-recorded version of one of their first songs called "PlayDoh".  

For my purposes here, i am counting these songs as one.  I will explain why momentarily.  
After an album full of songs about fried chicken, super powers, martian girls, powdered milk man, a two headed cat, skateboarding, snakes, and lobsters, this song sums up what the entire album was trying to say the whole time: We are a lot of fun, and we write silly songs. The song almost serves as a pitch for a saturday morning cartoon show staring the band.  Coincidentally, years later, this happened:

"Play Doh" was a song from the first Aquabats album.  The re-recorded version is a much better quality than the first version, and the band as a whole has a more rounded-out sound.  "Play Doh" is about losing your inocence as you grow older.  It is a love song to the carefree days of our youth that seem so far away sometimes.  It is an excelent counterpoint to the point made by "Theme Song".  These two songs sum up everything about the Aquabats in about 7 minutes.  


Next Up: Redemption Song by Bob Marley and the Wailers from the album Uprising

Uprising was the last studio album released while Bob Marley was still alive.  I may not share his views on religion, but this song still carries an important message: Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.  The song talks about fears that you might have, and how letting go of those fears and trusing that everything will work out is the only way to truley be free.  It is a simple song, written from a place of humility and grace.  Redemption Song was not only the finale of the album, it was the final song that he gave this world.


Last one (for now): Only in Dreams by Weezer from Weezer (The Blue Album)

I first heard this album when i was in 7th grade.  It changed my life. This next bit may be lost on a few people, but when i was growing up, buying my own albums was a big deal.  I either had to save up fro weeks to buy one, or i had to convince my mom to buy it for me (a task easier said than done).  This was one of the first albums that i bought myself, so it will always have a special place in my heart.  I was not one of the most popular kids in grade school (who am i kidding, i was a goddamn pariah) and i really connected with the music on this album because it sounded like a social outcast wrote it (Rivers Cuomo is in fact, a social outcast).  The song only in dreams served as a template for how all albums should end: emotionally, truthfully, and with bitchin guitar solos.  The song mirrored how i felt about everything that i wanted, but could never have (This included: a girlfriend, acceptence, friendship, not getting picked on in class, etc.).  It features many of the things that i like about Goodbye Sky Harbor (bulding and relenting, heartfelt lyrics, excellent songwriting), so i won't revisit those in depth here.  What really makes this song stand out to me is how perfect it made the album.  The album had upbeat songs, ballads, flat out pop songs, college rock, geek rock, and songs about loss.  It is a complete package.  Not many bands can pull of an entire song about wanting to hang out in their garage with their action figures and kiss records.  Only In Dreams really showcased the bands ability to craft a perfect song for the perfect moment, something they have been trying to recreate for years.

Honerable mentions:
Knights of Cydonia/ Muse/ Black Holes and Revalations
Freedom/ Rage Against the Machine/ Rage against the Machine
The whole second half of Abbey Road/ The Beatles
Third eye/ Tool/ Aenima
If it Means a lot to you/ A Day To Remember/ Homesick
Anthem/ Blink 182/ Enema of the State

In closing: A lot of thought can go into where songs go on your playlist/mixtape/album, but to really end your album right, go out with an epic emotional rollercoaster with some bitchin guitar solos, and you should do just fine. Or you can sing  about Play Doh.  That works too.

EDIT: After publishing this, i realized that a few of the videos do not work on mobile devices.  Sorry.  Also, I thought of a bunch of good examples, but i will not list them all here as it would get downright silly if i started adding them as i thought of them.  i will mention only a few more. 
Eden/ Tesseract/ One
Sex Tapes/ Protest the Hero/ Scurrilous 
Scavenger Type/ NOFX/ Punk in Drublic
Natural Anthem/ Postal Service/ Give Up

That is all.  
-J.