An album was originally more than a collection of songs; it had a beginning, a middle and an end. In the days of vinyl, there were significant constraints; no more than about 22 minutes of music on each side of the record, two (or four) sides, and an enforced break in the listening experience between each side.
Contemporary albums of songs are like a classical symphony, and Mahler’s 2nd Symphony is a 90+ minute epic in 5 movements that Mahler conceived and wrote with a programme in mind (a forerunner of prog rock’s ‘concept’ albums?!). Titled “Resurrection”, it takes the listener from a tragic funeral and questions about what comes after death, through a remembrance of happy times in life, despair that life might be meaningless, through to transcendent renewal and hope for eternal life in heaven Because of the shattering bleakness of the opening movement and significant change of tone into the 2nd, Mahler recommended a 5-minute pause between them. Although it’s not often observed in concerts, it was brought to life on my favourite recording (Simon Rattle and the CBSO from the 1990s) by having two CDs, the first of which ONLY contains the first movement, so there’s an enforced pause before you can continue. This was a pretty significant choice of art over commercialism, as a CD can easily carry 70′ of music, but they chose not to add additional tracks to the presentation.
And so here are a very few examples of albums with great opening or closing songs, or indeed both. These selections are highly influenced by my own record collection, and most come from the time before CDs. No apologies for the many different and better choices I could have made…
Start as you mean to go on I’m not a huge fan of the Gallagher Brothers, and kind of gave up listening to them not long after I started, but OASIS’ debut album Definitely Maybe gets off to a properly blistering start, with a huge statement of intent, self-confidence and Mancunian swagger.
Perhaps driven by commercial pressure, it’s often the case that albums open with a popular single, and Simon & Garfunkel did that with Bridge Over Troubled Water, with the title track and most well-known song up first. It helps even more that this is perhaps the apotheosis of their songwriting and vocal performance, not to mention the uplifting promise from the lyrics. This was an album full of hits, but was fraught with difficulties and became the last they recorded together before a pretty bitter break-up, so it’s poignant that it closes with the gentle and concilatory Song for the Asking.
this is my song for the asking ask me and I will play all the love I hold inside
Perhaps the band that consistently open their albums with a bang are U2. For me it started with The Joshua Tree, their move from Angry Young Dubliners to Stadium Rock Giants who would Conquer America. Where the Streets Have No Name starts with something like 20 seconds of near silence, then slowly shifting organ chords. Instantly recognisable U2-The Edge guitar arpeggios appear, very softly around 45″ in, slowly building towards 1’10” where the bass & drums finally start. We’re rocking now, but Bono doesn’t make a sound until 1’49”. The anticipation is immense, the scale is as epic as the Great American Desert Plains featured on the album cover.
Their next album Achtung Baby, had a complete change from those big expansive soundscapes to a grittier, almost industrial feel. Recorded in Berlin, the opening track Zoo Station introduces sounds utterly unlike anything they had done before for 45 seconds before settling into something at least vaguely familiar.
U2 definitely front-load their albums, with most of the hits and most popular songs on what would be Side 1, or the very start of Side 2; Beautiful Day and Vertigo are both absolute classics and launch their respective albums.
End on a High Another terrific album that was definitely front-loaded is Peter Gabriel’s So. I’d always felt it kind of lost momentum and faded away as the later songs were definitely less compelling compared to what came before. Maybe Peter Gabriel agreed, in that soon after the original release, he changed the order of Side 2, moving In Your Eyes to the very final track. At that time he also tended to end his live shows with this song, extending it enormously into a joyous jam-session with his band and percussionists, and including the Sengalese artists Youssou N’Dour, who sang on the album track. It’s one of my favourite songs of all time, and a clear demonstration of the Peak End Rule – closing with this song makes So a much more powerful experience.
How to Finish an Album: two more obvious choices The Beatles A Day in the Life is a tremendously complex song to end any album, let alone with the recording technology of 1967. Featuring a full orchestra largely improvising and a final chord sounded on several pianos simultaneously that resonates for over 40 seconds, it then famously added a (joke) tone that is beyond the capacity of the human ear, but within the range of cats and dogs, and a cacophony of scrambled sounds and gibberish vocals to play on the record’s run out groove, which would often mean it repeated until the needle was lifted; playing with the form and medium on different levels, it’s madness and genius.
Rock’n’Roll Suicide is the climax to David Bowie’s seminal album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. From a gentle, plaintive start it builds to a cathartic climax, exhorting the audiences that
you’re not alone, just turn on with me and you’re not alone, Let’s turn and be not alone Gimme your hands, ’cause you’re wonderful
The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways. Like a vision, she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, Hey, that’s me, and I want you only Don’t turn me home again I just can’t face myself alone again.
So starts one of my favourite albums, and I Reckon perhaps the best opening and closing tracks on both sides of an album. Thunder Road is about a young guy determined to escape his hometown, that’s full of losers. Anywhere but here is the declaration. By the end of Side 1 it feels as though Bruce is singing about a bigger town or small city, but it’s darker on the Backstreets, and an intense friendship with ‘Terry’ seems to end in tragedy and desperation. Side 2 kicks off withthe album’s title track, a barnstorming anthem that never lets up from the opening bars to the finish, and then after two much quieter, more intimate songs, ends with the epic 10-minute Jungleland, a poetic depiction of life on the seedier side of New Jersey. The American dream lies in rags like Mary’s graduation gown from the opening track.
During my Best Man’s speech at my brother’s wedding, I referred to a selfie he had taken as a teenager (always ahead of his time!), in which the album cover of Peter Gabriel’s ‘So’ is clearly visible, remarking that this was an almost compulsory purchase for any intellectual, white, middle-class teenage boy in the late 1980s. Of course I had a copy: I was there right from the start.
So is Peter Gabriel’s most commercial album, and propelled him from the arthouse audience he had enjoyed since leaving Genesis into the mainstream, driven by stunningly inventive videos and the heyday of MTV. As a white middle-class angsty teenager, it was very important to me in the late 1980s, and I still love it today.
I come to you, defences down, with the trust of a child…
For all its commercial gloss, slick songwriting and laser-sharp production from Daniel Lanois, So is an intensely intimate album. The opening track, Red Rain, recounts a vivid dream to the constant shimmering of cymbals and restless, always moving drumbeats. By the end of the song, the vocals collapse as if exhausted.
The insistent rhythms of percussion and bass are important throughout the album, driven by Manu Katché’s fabulous work, creating a tone that’s sometimes mystical (Mercy Street), sometimes unsettling (That Voice Again), sometimes soothing, like resting on a partner’s chest listening to their heartbeat (Don’t Give Up)…
This is the new stuff…
Sledgehammer is one of the most iconic songs of the 1980s. Its groundbreaking video featured fabulous stop-motion animation from the then-fledgling Aardman Studios and became the most-played video ever on MTV. It’s a massive departure from Gabriel’s earlier singles, a joyous, innuendo-laden homage to Otis Redding that opens with bamboo flutes but is dominated by an in-your-face horn section. This ends with a bang, not a whimper. Perhaps less successful, Big Time also takes an unapologetically straightforward approach to satirising Gabriel’s own success, although it feature terrific guitar work from Nile Rodgers.
We’re proud of who you are…
Don’t Give Up follows Sledgehammer on the album, and couldn’t be more different. From an assertion of sexual machismo, we’re brought down to earth in this limpid duet between Gabriel and Kate Bush. Apparently inspired by Dorothea Lange’s photos of a woman and her family during the Great Depression of the 1930s, this is less a traditional duet and more a conversation between a man and a woman. He’s been battered by unemployment and the recession of the 1980s, and clinging on by his fingernails.
Kate Bush is simply perfect in this song, providing the counterpoint to Gabriels’ damaged masculinity. Just a couple of years later she’d write and sing (for me) one of the greatest and most heart-wrenching songs about femininity, This Woman’s Work.
Wear your inside out…
Amongst the singles, there’s still the more artsy, eclectic songs, of which Mercy Street is clearly my favourite. Breathy vocals, a throbbing bass and ethereal Fairlight sampling make this a thing of great beauty. We do What We’re Told and This is the Picture are more experiments in tone than anything else. They always felt like a slightly weak end to the album to me, a judgement I’ve only slightly amended with time.
But whichever way I go, I come back to the place you are…
On the original (vinyl) album In Your Eyes was the first song on side 2, even though Gabriel wanted it to close the album. Apparently this was because its heavy bass rhythms could cause the needle to jump in the tighter grooves in the centre of a disc (historic trivia that you young kids won’t understand…!).
Perhaps that contributed to my underwhelming sensation as the album ended, because I Reckon that In Your Eyes is one of the best love songs ever written, and a brilliant end to any collection of songs. It’s a brilliant consolidation of everything I like about So: a terrifically catchy chorus, fabulous percussion and rhythms throughout, wonderful vocals from Gabriel and Youssou N’Dour, and lyrics that never fail to move me, despite how familiar they have become to me since I first heard them as an angsty teen in 1986.
Love, I get so lost sometimes.
Days pass, and this emptiness fills my heart.
When I want to run away, I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go I come back to the place you are…
What I Reckon 