10 classic albums that have a terrible ending
Any great album should feel like a well-constructed novel throughout its runtime. No one gets to be one of the best songsmiths by just playing the same thing every time they record, and it’s best to mix it up whenever someone gets into the studio. Although artists like The Beatles do have some bonafide classics under their belt, their choices to end the album bring it to a screeching halt rather than full circle.
Because there’s a certain rhythm to any kind of great album. There’s an ebb and flow to every single song on the track listing, so getting to the end is like landing the plane. As opposed to approaching it cautiously, most of the final songs on these albums either go off on a separate tangent or intentionally throw everything out the window to work on something different.
It’s not a bad thing to go for a different feel whenever working on an album, but when everything falls apart at the end, it can leave the audience feeling a little bit jaded. All you had to do was take them on a journey with sound, and yet the final track just fumbles by either being merely okay or deliberately throwing everything off.
It might have been what the artist had in mind, but it doesn’t make any sense when working with what had come before. Everything before this one track had been phenomenal, but this is reserved for the songs that are the equivalent of running a marathon and then eating shit on the pavement right as you reach the last mile.
10 classic albums that end terribly:
10. ‘Dreamboat Annie (Reprise)’ – Heart
When discussing lacklustre endings, it’s hard to count many interlude tracks. After all, this is just meant to be listened to in the context of the album, and even if it does add some finality to everything, it shouldn’t be graded on the same metric as the proper tracks on the record. There is a certain level of patience when it comes to them, though, and Heart managed to cross it one too many times when making Dreamboat Annie.
Although every piece of the album was meant to be this continuing look through the spiritual side of rock, hearing the main theme three separate times on one single album feels way too much like overkill. And just when it looks like everyone is out of the woods, the reprise of everything in another version of the title track is the least necessary piece of the record, down to the fact that it takes the themes and plays them over again to make sure that we get the gist of everything.
The fact that it’s a reprise keeps it from being any higher on a list like this, but this should just be a warning to anyone trying to stretch out their best songs too much. It might sound good at the moment, but just because the artist is having fun repeatedly hearing the same melody doesn’t mean the audience is as well.
9. ‘Ebony and Ivory’ – Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney really didn’t need to answer to anyone after Band on the Run did what it did. He had been counted out by every single critic on the planet, and now he was on top of the world with an entirely new band. Once he decided to fly solo without Wings, though, Tug of War was the sturdiest pop album he ever made, but with a big piece of highly condensed cheese reserved for the back end of the record.
While the idea of McCartney and Stevie Wonder working off each other sounds like an absolute dream on paper, neither of them were playing to their strengths on ‘Ebony and Ivory’, especially with the melody sounding like something that comes out of some lighthearted family friendly sitcom. You won’t catch this critic saying a bad thing about the subject matter, but the idea of racial equality and love amongst all backgrounds really deserved a better song than something that could make someone a full-blown diabetic after one too many listens.
Then again, we can at least forgive McCartney because he gave us ‘What’s That You’re Doing’, the Wonder collaboration that we all wanted but was tucked away midway through the record. But despite having two of the greatest living musicians on the planet in one room together, ‘Ebony and Ivory’ is proof that not all supergroups produce the magic everyone hears in their head.
8. ‘The Struggle Within’ – Metallica
By the time Metallica began work on The Black Album, the goal was to get away from the traditional style of thrash song. They could write that stuff in their sleep, but where do you go from there after you make something as creatively exhausting as And Justice For All? They had clearly hit the ceiling, but in trying to make simpler music, ‘The Struggle Within’ committed the cardinal sin of promising more and under-delivering.
Granted, a Metallica record is pretty much expected to sound similar in a few pieces. No album with half of the track listing being in just one key is going to get points for being diverse, but they at least made up for it with cute quirks like the interpolation of West Side Story in ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ or their first attempt at a straight-ahead ballad on ‘Nothing Else Matters’. Just when it looks like everything will come crashing to a halt, though, ‘The Struggle Within’ suffers from being only okay.
For the first 30 seconds, it sounds like you’re going to be in for one of the heaviest tunes on the album, but the minute that the guitar kicks in, there’s not much that differentiates it from a tune like ‘Holier Than Thou’ earlier in the track listing. The rest of the band wasn’t as thrilled with it when recording it, either, but when the previous albums featured massive stops like ‘The Call of Ktulu’ and ‘Damage Inc.’, this should have been the sign that maybe it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to keep it to 11 tracks.
7. ‘Milk Cow Blues’ – Aerosmith
Every artist can only hope to put their best foot forward whenever they make any record. Even if you’ve been in the game for a while, it’s important to have everyone operating at 100% whenever that red light comes on. But for a band that was as tight as Aerosmith, ‘Milk Cow Blues’ was the first sign that no one sounded like they wanted to be there anymore.
Then again, Draw the Line was already a weird time for the group. They had spent the last few years getting as loaded as possible, and now that they were fully-fledged drug addicts, half of the record feels half-baked already. Although that led to some cool moments like the title track and ‘Kings and Queens’, hearing them coaxing by on easy mode with a live cut that they had covered thousands of times just feels like a step backwards.
Compared to ‘Home Tonight’ bringing everything to a close on Rocks or the sweeping ballad ‘You See Me Crying’, you can practically see every band member looking at their watch, wondering where the tape will run out, and they can return to freebasing. Everyone in the band has said that this was a case of them dabbling in music instead of dabbling in drugs, and there’s probably no better indication of that than this song.
6. ‘Cygnus X1’ – Rush
No part of Rush’s discography was meant to be repeated. Although they had tried various story-driven songs before, everything usually had to be from a different angle or had to find some different way of turning their limbs inside out trying to play it. While A Farewell to Kings is by far their weirdest venture into prog-rock, this isn’t the case with the album not having a great ending. It’s that it doesn’t have an ending at all.
Oh, there’s a song at the end of the album that closes up shop, but the problem is that ‘Cygnus X1’ doesn’t properly end. Throughout the final half of the record, this epic song is all about a man travelling through the cosmos before coming across a black hole and venturing into the deep void of space to see what’s on the other side of the world. The only problem is that we don’t get to see what happens once he finally gets sucked in.
For any avid fan, they had to wait a few months before Hemispheres came out, with the title track serving as the second part of the epic where we find out what the protagonist sees on the other side. Most prog bands have benefited from having interconnecting songs, but most have at least had the common courtesy to keep them on the same album rather than have their audience sit on their hands for a while as they finish everything.
5. ‘Prosthetic Head’ – Green Day
Not every terrible ending is based on the quality of the song. Most people might just come to this list expecting absolute trash, but some of the greatest albums of all time have been disregarded for having tunes that are merely good but not great in the final track. While Nimrod is by far the most eclectic Green Day and one of the finest of their discography, this is a case of them sequencing the album completely wrong.
Because right before ‘Prosthetic Head’ comes on, we had to go through listening to the ballad ‘Good Riddance’, which is still one of the best ways that Green Day have to close their setlist to this day. So now that everyone is lulled back down, seeing them build the energy right back up again for one final punk thrasher just deadens all of the impact that their ballad had going for it.
Green Day have said numerous times that the most punk thing that they could have done was put ‘Good Riddance’ on the record, but considering what follows it up, it’s almost like they wanted some sort of security blanket. ‘Macy’s Day Parade’ got the idea a lot better on Warning, but given the fact that they couldn’t close up shop on Nimrod on the softer note, it’s the one time where Green Day seemed just a little bit scared of their fanbase.
4. ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast’ – Pink Floyd
There’s always been some debate surrounding when Pink Floyd actually turned into a great band. Most people see ‘Echoes’ as the moment they turned into icons, while others might look at Dark Side of the Moon as the true peak of their powers. Atom Heart Mother does get way too neglected by both the band and the fans, but it’s not exactly easy to defend those claims when sitting through all 12 minutes of ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast’.
While both David Gilmour and Roger Waters have washed their hands of the album, tunes like ‘Fat Old Sun’ and the title track are still decent forays into both the pop and prog side of their sound. They did have that avant-garde side, and they didn’t really want to let that go the minute they decided to have a roadie fumble through his kitchen and pick out what he wanted for breakfast as they performed in the background.
There is definitely room for avant-garde material in Floyd’s music, but this kind of exercise sounds like the band didn’t really know what to do by the end. Considering every Floyd album has some overarching theme behind it, it’s hard to really parse out what they are getting when all we’re hearing is someone bitching about what kind of marmalade they want that morning.
3. ‘Zombie Zoo’ – Tom Petty
Tom Petty was never one to listen to what the suits wanted. As far as he was concerned, he was just going to make whatever music he felt sounded right, and if it didn’t go along with the times, that was too damn bad. Although the label didn’t really understand what Petty was on about when making Full Moon Fever, they did at least have a small point if they were talking about the final track.
While the rest of the album has some of the finest music that Petty would ever release, ‘Zombie Zoo’ is the kind of throwaway track that feels like it should have been forgotten on some aborted third Traveling Wilburys album. The tune is good enough by Petty’s standards, but hearing him writing goofy lyrics about a girl who just wants to live among brain-dead idiots listening to mindless music doesn’t really work when the tune feels half-baked as well.
Roy Orbison does a serviceable job on backing vocals, but considering Petty had help from The Bangles on the deep cut ‘Waiting for Tonight’, he should have taken that one out of the vault and used it as the album closer instead. The album is all about the thrills that come in the night, so having a night-themed song pretty much writes itself, doesn’t it?
2. ‘Better Man’ – Oasis
Oasis usually never had a problem putting together a decent closing track for every one of their albums. ‘Champagne Supernova’ is still one of the most epic tracks that they would ever write, and even if ‘Married With Children’ and the reprise of ‘All Around the World’ felt like filler tracks by comparison, they at least had some charm to them. As they entered the 2000s, though, Heathen Chemistry marked the first major turning point for their career, and ‘Better Man’ was a sign that things would get bloated way too fast.
It’s hard to really talk about an album that has ‘Little By Little’ and ‘Songbird’ on it as being unsuccessful, but ‘Better Man’ is a case of Liam trying to coax by on his swagger and not really going anywhere. But just a simple dud isn’t enough to get you this high on the list. No, that comes with the fact that the album makes everyone wait for an eternity before officially ending with ‘The Cage’.
Although the proper ending is a decent piece of what could have been a good song with lyrics, the fact that fans had to wait a full half-hour to hear it goes beyond taking the piss. This was a case of Oasis torturing their superfans a little bit, and even though neither ‘Better Man’ nor ‘The Cage’ are terrible, they are prime examples of why boring should be considered worse than objectively bad.
1. ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ – The Beatles
During the making of Help!, The Beatles seemed to outgrow their moptop days. They were still playing up the teenage heartthrob angle that everyone knew them for, but considering they were smoking weed like crazy in between takes, it’s safe to say that their careers as train thespians were the last things on their minds. It was now all about experimentation in the studio, but right as they concluded one of their most adventurous albums, we go back into all too familiar territory for their cover of ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’.
While not everything on the album is Revolver-levels of experimental, ‘I Need You’ is a nice enough change of pace, and ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ foreshadowed the band’s move towards folk music a la Bob Dylan one album later on Rubber Soul. They had the makings for a graceful bow on ‘Yesterday’, but considering how embarrassed they were to have it on the album they ended up rush-releasing this old rock standard.
Lennon is in fine form on the vocals, but this is one of the few occasions where a Beatles song feels like it shouldn’t have existed, especially when that guitar riff keeps playing and becomes annoying towards the end of the tune. And it’s even more tragic that they didn’t learn their lesson when making ‘Run For Your Life’ closing out Rubber Soul. The Beatles were on the cusp of greatness, but both Help! And Rubber Soul are examples of them moving rock and roll many steps forward and then taking one step back.
