Can a bad finale ruin an album?
Any music fan knows the curse of a perfect tracklist ruined by commercial pressure or a label’s insistence on a bloated deluxe edition. Whether it’s the Japan-only bonus tracks, the unnecessary outtakes clogging up streaming services, or a messy appendage of rarities that disrupts the album’s cohesion, the so-called ‘bonus content’ often feels like an intrusion. It’s as egregious as desecrating the album cover or tampering with the track order.
Yes, anniversary reissues are welcome, and nice roundups of session material are sometimes a godsend for those whose odds-and-ends material could only be heard on an unofficial YouTube upload, but in the case of Depeche Mode’s excellent remaster series, Mute Records had the class and good sense to include such material on a second disc.
While it has been tested of late in the age of mood-centred playlists and TikTok attention spans, the album still ultimately reigns as popular music’s paramount expression, tapping into the deep, primordial affinity with narrative and the age-old ‘beginning, middle and end’ unity of storytelling 101.
Disciplined musicians know this, acting as editors as much as eager artists, knowing what song needs to go where and casting aside tracks destined as B-sides not just due to quality but how they threaten imbalance to the album’s aural journey.
That’s not to say that every album needs to end with some grand closing statement. Whether a welcome poke of light relief or a contemplative coda to stir intrigue, a closing buffer can often be welcome and form an affectionate feature of an album. What would The Beatles’ Abbey Road be without Paul McCartney’s charmingly silly ‘Her Majesty’ ditty that follows the record’s epic medley that dominates side two, or Radiohead’s haunting digital rush of electronic timbre that terrifies the complacent listener who forgot to turn Kid A off after ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’, a disquieting slap perfectly in keeping with the LP’s spectral bite?
Some album finales are entirely consistent with the album’s sonic character or aesthetic and may well endure a quick ‘skip’ whenever it finally arrives. The Velvet Underground & Nico is an undisputed totem of proto-punk snarl and avant-garde decadence, but does anyone honestly sit through the nearly eight minutes of ‘European Son’s discordant guitar scrape with the same fascination as ‘Venus in Furs’ or ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’? Its merits are up for debate, but it’s a fitting close to an album that sought to unsettle and challenge as an acidic riposte to the West Coast’s Summer of Love, even if it’s arguably a failure.
A final song’s ability to ruin an album depends on its relevancy and level of superficiality. No one can take away The Beatles’ harmony of pop marvel and maturing lyrical sophistication on 1965’s Help!, but, following ‘Yesterday’s eternal hymn, in comes a wholly superfluous Larry Williams cover to pour a big bucket of underwhelm on whatever solemn epiphany was had, ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ ending an otherwise great album on a pedestrian note.
Perhaps a stretch, good songs are good songs whatever serves as a record’s final curtain, but their sullying besmirch of a tepid closer is the sign of an artist not taking care of the relic they’re about to unleash to the ages, a stain of glib oversight or indifference that plants a tiny spec of cynicism when first holding aloft their new square-shaped statement: “if they’re not going to take this seriously, why should I?”
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