Week 2
Songs end in love, heartbreak and death, but sonically and structurally they also end in several different ways.
Date: 16 Jan 2021
Motion: THB all pop songs should end in a fadeout
Role: MP (opp.)
Having listened to the conversation, especially from the govt., it must be said that a fade-out has its good sides as a song ending. It can be fast or slow, for starters. And it does not prevent a DJ from cross-fading into another song. Like it has been said, it can also be done manually by a person, if it does not have a natural, other kind of a stop point.
There are, for all that, a number of other types of endings that are equally meritable. In the annals of pop music, all kinds of endings have been tried so far, in many variations, on a number of records, because let’s face it: a song always has to end. It cannot go on forever. It needs to be stopped “in its tracks”. And, even if some philosophers might argue that “that’s impossible”, “the song cannot end”, “it will go on in your head”, for the sake of pragmatics, all songs end somehow, followed by a silence.
I want to enumerate here other types of endings that exist and mention also songs in which they are manifest:
Abrupt ending (1 bar or less) with a possible tail echo
CMX: “Ainomieli”; Guns n’ Roses: “Chinese Democracy” (it comes one or two beats after you expect it); Lords of the New Church: “Open Your Eyes”
Abrupt, violent end with 7, 5, 3 or 1 exact beat(s) of the snare drum
The Mission: “Into the Blue”
Bang of a gong
Alphaville: “Big in Japan”
Cabaret/circus/vaudeville music ending
Ugly Kid Joe: “Everything About You”
Hitting down of the base chord/note and letting it ring/vacillate for a couple/triple of bars
Blink-182: “All the Small Things”; No Doubt: “Just a Girl”; The Beatles: “A Day in the Life”; The Pixies: “Allison”
Hitting down some other chord/note than the base and letting it ring or cutting it short
ELO feat. Olivia Newton-John: “Xanadu”; Smash Mouth: “All Star”
Playing the piano keys up or down the scale to base note
Mansun: “Wide Open Space” (just hitting the same keys)
Prolonged “yeeeeaaaaaahh”
Too many Guns n’ Roses and Courtney Love songs to mention
Random synthesizer white noise
Queens of the Stone Age: “No One Knows” (several of these, ending in detuned radio noise)
Space sounds or special effects
Nico: “Innocent and Vain”
From the above examples, you can see (or hear) that there are many kinds of endings that a pop song can have, not forgetting that pieces of classical music also have many endings apart from the ubiquitous blasting out of the base note of the key of the composition with all the instruments, which sounds a bit scary, due to the sheer amount and volume of the instruments. I would say that there are as many ways to end a song as there are to die. A life is like a song. It has its beginning, its curve upward, its drama, its apex and — ultimately — an end.
Now, if the govt. would like to have as believe that only a fadeout is a passable ending to a song, it would like saying that “only a spell of suffering in a hospital after withering away at a nursing home is an appropriate end to a life”, for that is the approximate equivalent in life to a fadeout. That is downright cruelty. My side is happy to announce that the departure from this life can also happen more energetically, faster, with less misery. Those other kinds of departures you can hear in those other kinds of endings in songs, the way I have outlined them (above) before. They are also very happy endings, if we judge the merit of the ending based on how long it is. From this point of view, it is better that we have endings other than just the fadeout to choose from.
Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Edustajan ominaisuudessa referoin keskustelua mutta myös kärjistän sen loppua kohti mennessä tavalla, joka voi hermostuttaa heikkohermoisempia. Täten täytän profiilini vaatimukset omalla tavallani. Koska mainitsemiani esimerkkejä ei millään ehtisi keksiä valmistautumisajan puitteissa ajallisesti, koska niiden selvitys on aikaa vievää työtä, sanoisin siinä tilanteessa ainoastaan keksimäni otsikot ja jättäisin esimerkit pois. Näin kirjallisessa esityksessä esimerkit voi kuitenkin jättää paikoilleen, jotta puheessa olisi vähän enemmän ajattelemisen aihetta.
Polar Ice Standpoints Society 