This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Winston Churchill[1]
Surprise (or possibly infuriate) your listeners by appearing to finish the song and then starting back up again. As heard in:
Piggies, Helter Skelter and Born To Run (Bruce Springsteen).
One Minute Theory Lesson
For several centuries musical pieces in western music usually finished by resolving on the tonic chord. This was even more pronounced when combined with slowing down the tempo, repetition of the phrase proceeding the final chord, a prolonged free time crescendo on the final chord - or all of the above. With the advent of audio recording another ending became possible - the fade out. All these ‘cues’ are so ubiquitous that placing them earlier in the piece creates the assumption that the pieces is ending.
Beatles Application
The earliest example of a fab four false ending is the 1962 version on Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby found on the Live! at the Star-Club bootleg. Though the band recorded the song two years later on Beatles for Sale there they only have one extra ending [2:14]. But live they keep the gag going with four additional ending [2:12][2]. This ‘I’m just messin’ with ya” style ending also appears on 1968’s Piggies which concludes in a perfectly satisfactory way before George says “one more time” and we’re treated to a whole new cadence in a totally different key [1:49].
Another kind of false ending is the one that gives the impression “We’re enjoying ourselves too much to quit.” The single version of Get Back[3] [2:27] stops briefly, then launches into more jamming. Blackbird slows to a halt [1:34] before we get a repeat of the entire first verse with it’s own unique ending. I Will seems to heading directly for a conclusion but takes a brief digression back to the bridge melody [1:24] and In My Life delays the end [2:14] by giving us a snippet of the guitar hook we previously heard in the intro.
Using a chord or progression that has previously led somewhere else is is another way to create false expectations. The verses of Something have alternative endings. One, resolves to C, and leads back to the verse and the other, resolves to A, and leads (via a key change) to the bridge. At the end of the song Harrison fakes us out by taking the song to A [2:42] and therefore, we assume, to a repeat of the bridge. But no, he immediately repeats the C version and concludes the song.
Helter Skelter has three distinct endings [2:56, 3:30, 4:10]. First, a “trash can cacophony”[4] as the band freak out on the tonic chord, then two ‘false fade outs’. They’d done this before, on Strawberry Fields Forever, disappearing in a swirl of psychedelic chaos [3:20] before fading back in for a second helping of mayhem.
A final of finale is the ‘never-ending ending’. As a single, Hey Jude is less remarkable for it’s length (Richard Harris’ hit MacArthur Park was four months earlier and fourteen seconds longer), than for the fact that over half of it’s run time is taken up by the ending.[5] The four bar coda section is repeated nineteen times! Once again there was a prototype - the Beatles trialled the idea of an extended, musically unrelated, coda in a more modest way the year before on Hello Goodbye [2:40].[6]
Featured Artists: Haydn, Beethoven and King’s X
None of these fake endings were unique to the Beatles. Do You Love Me by the Contours [2:23] and Funny Vibe by Living Colour [3:45] both tease us with false fades. Jellyfish can’t seem to stop repeating the final phrase on Now She Knows She’s Wrong [2:17] just like Ringo couldn’t leave the drum fill alone on Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby. The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage and Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run share the same kind of mid-song break as Blackbird, but on steroids. Born To Run reaches such a climax in the instrumental section that the whole band seems to collapse from exhaustion [2:52] and need Bruce to count them back in. Fingertips Part 2 by Stevie Wonder is one of those ‘lightning in a bottle’ moments captured on audio tape. Performing live at Chicago’s Regal Theatre Stevie has genuinely finished the song - sung “Goodbye” to the audience and been ‘played off’ by the house band to rapturous applause. Still, on being encouraged to return and “Take a bow Stevie” he starts to play the song again.[7]
None of these musicians stack up to
Beethoven and Haydn for dogged refusal to finish a tune though. Both the
1st and 4th movements of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor
use every trick in the book to draw things to a close before repeatedly
rushing off to chase some new thematic development like a dog that’s
seen a squirrel.[8] Josef Haydn’s String Quartet, Op. 33 No. 2
is nicknamed “The Joke” because after the final movement ‘ends’ the
first violin carries on, playing short fragments of the main melody with
the rests in between getting longer until it finally quits, unresolved,
mid-phrase. His Symphony No. 90 in C major seemingly ends in the middle of the 4th Movement but, after four bars of silence, quietly resumes a semitone higher.[9]
The modern era’s successor to Ludwig and Josef is King’s X. On their 1990 song We Were Born To Be Loved the ending is the highlight of the song. Beginning at 3:16 they take over a minute and a half trying to stop, using every standard ending in the book. The cherry on the top is that when they finally do, the next song starts less than a second later, in the same key, on the same chord - meaning that we’re already listening to a different song before we realise the previous one has finished.
Reader Application
In the era of digital recording incomplete, or non-resolving, endings are becoming the dominant form. When songs are created by cutting and pasting chord progressions in a DAW[10], there are no ‘live’ musicians feeling the powerful primal urge to resolve to the tonic in the final moments of the recording. And even when live musicians are used producers rarely get them to record a ‘final chord’ (whether slowing down, freaking out or both) to paste on the end. And artificially creating such an ending ‘in the box’ can feel fussy and time consuming. That’s why so many songs of the 2010s and 2020s don’t end they just stop, as if someone pulled the plug. So a contemporary song with a real resolved ending can stand out.
An author or film director devotes a massive amount of time to thinking about how their story should end, but for many songwriters it’s not so much an afterthought as a ‘no thought’. Consider the theme and mood of your song and extrapolate the kind of ending that would suit it. If it’s a breathless sprint, maybe an exhausted collapse over the line. Something regal or anthemic? Perhaps a set of accented chords that feel almost like a fanfare. An unresolved issue that’s going to cycle on in the future or a tale told by a character who’s said their piece and is leaving? Maybe a fade. But for a playful mood that doesn’t want to let go or barnstorming speech with too much to say a false ending might be the right ending.
Extended Playlist
1788 Haydn: Symphony No. 90 in C major (4th Movement) – Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle (2007 recording) [3:12][12]
1808 Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor (1st Movement) - Herbert Von Karajan (1963 recording) [5:44, 6:40]
1808 Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor (4th Movement) - Herbert Von Karajan (1963 recording) [6:52, 8:40]
1962 Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby (Live! at the Star-Club version) – The Beatles [2:12][13]
1962 Do You Love Me - The Contours [2:23]
1963 Fingertips Part 2 - Stevie Wonder [1:44]
1964 Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby (Beatles for Sale version) – The Beatles [2:14]
1965 In My Life – The Beatles [2:14]
1966 Rain – The Beatles [2:24]
1967 Strawberry Fields Forever – The Beatles [3:20]
1967 You Got What it Takes - Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell [2:34]
1967 Hello Goodbye – The Beatles [2:40]
1967 The Look Of Love (Casino Royale OST version)[14] – Dusty Springfield [3:32]
1968 Blackbird – The Beatles [1:34]
1968 I Will – The Beatles [1:24]
1968 Piggies – The Beatles [1:49]
1968 Helter Skelter – The Beatles [2:56, 3:30, 4:10]
1969 Get Back (single version)[15] – The Beatles [2:27]
1969 Something – The Beatles [2:42]
1971 Life on Mars – David Bowie [3:20]
1972 Suffragette City - David Bowie [2:43]
1975 Born To Run – Bruce Springsteen [2:52]
1975 Welcome To My Nightmare – Alice Cooper [3:49]
1978 Mr Blue Sky - Electric Light Orchestra (Out of the Blue version) [3:33, 3:43, 4:10][16]
1978 Sweet is the Night - Electric Light Orchestra [3:11, 3:17]
1988 Funny Vibe – Living Colour [3:45]
1990 We Were Born To Be Loved – King's X [3:16]
1990 Now She Knows She’s Wrong - Jellyfish [2:17]
1991 November Rain - Guns 'n' Roses [6:43]
1991 (Everything I Do) I Do It For You - Bryan Adams [3:46][17]
1991 Shinbone Alley/Hard to Exist - Spin Doctors [9:28, 10:42, 11:22]
1992 Rain When I Die - Alice in Chains [5:28]
1994 Sabotage - Beastie Boys [1:35]
2004 Who Killed Tangerine? – Tears For Fears [4:12]
2005 Dare – Gorillaz [2:22]
2007 Brianstorm – Arctic Monkeys [2:31]
2011 Shang Ding Hong Song – Matt Blick [3:19]
2013 Brother Bull – Matt Blick [2:48]
Further Study
Ticket 4: Recycle Your 'O'sTicket 10: The Aeolian Cadence
Ticket 16: The Picardy Third
Ticket 20: End With A Couple Of Triplets
Ticket 46: False Picardy
Get In Touch
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End Credits
Thanks to the good folks of Wikipedia.
[1] Winston Churchill: The End of the Beginning (p. 265).
[2] Approximate timing - this unofficial bootleg exists in multiple versions.
[3] The single version of Get Back is not a totally different recording to the LP track as is often claimed but it does have a coda from a different take edited in and this version only appears on Past Masters and the compilation LP “1”.
[4] Charlotte Yates coined this phrase in her article Ten Ways to End It (Your Song, That Is) on Bandzoogle (30 Apr. 2021). Judas Priest are masters of this type of ending - especially live. See Diamond and Rust on Unleashed in the East [3:09] for example.
[5] Tears For Fears’ 2004 song Who Killed Tangerine mines the same vein taking a full minute and a half to fade, while singing, with the most delicious irony “When you think it’s all over it’s not over”.
[6] Arguably they didn’t do this on Cry Baby Cry. The coda of Hey Jude merely sounds like it’s another song but the one on Cry Baby Cry actually is [2:33]. Written by Paul Can You Take Me Back was recorded separately and edited onto the track, having no more connection to it’s predecessor than Her Majesty does to The End.
[7] Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s 1967 studio recording You Got What it Takes sounds like a close relation, with a reprised ending that sounds like a curtain call or a play off on a chat show [2:34].
[8] Obviously there are millions of cover version out there. For timings listening to Herbert Von Karajan’s 1963 recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker - 1st movement [5:44, 6:40] and 4th movement [6:52, 8:40].
[9] Listen to the 2007 Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle recording on Haydn - Symphonies Nos. 88-92 (Disc 1 Track 12). At [3:12] the audience are fooled into applauding and the orchestra has to wait. Track 13 is an alternative version of the same movement with the audience either edited out (or forewarned!) and the correct four bar rest restored.
[10] Digital Audio Workstation i.e. software like Logic or Pro Tools. In layman’s terms - “songs written on a computer”.
[11] On the Cuarteto Casals LP Joseph Haydn: String Quartets Op. 33 - the track is titled Hob. III: 38.
[12] The 2007 Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle LP Haydn - Symphonies Nos. 88-92 has two versions of the 4th movement: track 12 and 13 on disc 1. The false ending occurs around 3:12 on both.
[13] The timing is approximate - this unofficial bootleg exists in multiple versions.
[14] This is the version with a run time of 4:08.
[15] The single version of Get Back appears on Past Masters and the compilation LP “1”.
[16] The LP version has a 5:06 run time. Mr Blue Sky is the finale of a four song suite that fills side 3 on Out of the Blue. The theme beginning at 4:12 is a reprise of the intro of Big Wheels [0:04], an earlier part of the suite.
[17] The extended version (with a 6:33 run time) that appears Waking Up the Neighbours is now ubiquitous but there is a shorter single edit that doesn’t feature the full coda.
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