The best career closer (final track on final album) ever?

another for The Doors - Riders On The Storm

The Doors might be unique in that, depending on mood, you can make a good case for first-song-on-first-album and last-song-on-last-album being the best thing they ever did.

earl brutus : male wife

a 3 minute blast of noise and typical off the cuff mad lyrics with the final words, 'don't get testy with me guy'

a perfect end to their double bill of lager fuelled chaos.

T. Rex - Teen Riot Structure

The Beach Boys - "Summer's Gone". A perfect career-closer.

The Who, "Tea and Theatre"

Very obvious choice for me, but Drive Like Jehu's "Sinews" is a song that still kills me about 20 years after hearing it for the first time. It encapsulates most of what was great about them, but has an spookiness and emotional weight to it that just ends that album (and their career it turns out) on a seriously heavy note. For many years the righteousness of the outro got me so worked up that I had to put the record on again.

LCD Soundsystem - Home : Maybe not their best or most explosive but it's really a distillation of what made them so great. They've already had their "big moment" songs so this is a great way to wind things down.

Neu! - After Eight

Orbital - Where is it Going? (if indeed it comes to that)

Queen - "The Show Must Go On". (And didn't it just.)

REM - "Electrolite"

One Two, Very Good (digital single). Ending a 10-year career on an endless-summer, everything is all right note after a great, but tortured, final EP.

Actually maybe it was only a 7-year career. But still.

REM - "Electrolite"

― Master of Treacle, Wednesday, October 31, 2012 10:33 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Riders On The Storm" is an acceptable bending of the rules but c'mon man

So is "All Apologies", btw

Simon & Garfunkel - "Song For The Asking"

from the morning

Pavement - Carrot Rope

Also I'm not a huge fan of Talking Heads' Naked but 'Cool Water' is a great closing track.

I've always loved the way "The Royal Scam" closes the album of the same name.

Does "Golden slumbers" / "Carry that weight" / "The end" count or does "Her majesty" get in the way of that argument?

Bugger, just seen it mentioned already.

How about "You can live at home"? Or has that been done as well?

It's not the album closer, but if we count it as the last of his tracks on an album he recorded, John Lennon's "Dear Yoko" on Double Fantasy kinda sums him up.

Metallica "Dyers Eve"

GBV had a perfect one until they went and made more records

^^^Yes x1000

40 versions as the end of 1st era Wire is pretty much perfection in distilling the balance of melody & tension they had reached by 154.

women - eyesore

Metallica "Dyers Eve"

― Siegbran, Wednesday, October 31, 2012 8:34 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

HahahahahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAhahahahha!

David Bowie's "Bring Me The Disco King" makes for a suitably elegiac career-closer.

Love Women's "Eyesore", and that record (Public Strain), so much. Still sad about the death of the guitarist and (I assume) break-up of this band. Feel like they had a huge amount of potential to build on that sound. Great Fall/Winter record.

David Bowie's "Bring Me The Disco King" makes for a suitably elegiac career-closer.

good call.

though i still live in hope that its not the end ..

Bump.

Some prescience there from mark e.

What insanalist suggested Videotape? Idiocy.

My chemical romance's "vampire money" now a good answer to this

I'll stand by my post 14 years ago, "Oh! Sweet Nuthin’," but want to add Janis Joplin's "Get It While You Can" to a short list of runners-up.

Christgau was big on Howard Tate; he had an album by him in his '60s core collection ('70s book). I'm surprised that I don't have a greatest hits myself (I used to see a Verve compilation around--guess it was always a little pricey). Didn't realize "Get It While You Can" was his song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9PawalWXUk

I’m going to assume “A moon shaped pool” is the final Radiohead album and closing their career with “true love waits” is kind of cool considering the song had been around since 1995 and it was attempted in the studio for several albums. It was a song that was sort of haunting the band for decades, a fitting closer for their career.

That’s if it’s really their final album which I’m going to predict it is.

Bowie's "I can't give everything away" is a pretty perfect career closer.

fugazi 'the argument' indeed

doesn't really count but jawbox's cover of 'cornflake girl' is good

sugar 'explode and make up' tho

(Oh! Sweet Nuthin' is a great pick but . . . )

yea Bowie kinda knocked this outta the park

Bowie is a perfect album closer

Either "Motion of Ariel", the last song on the last full Loud Family album Attractive Nuisance, or "Don't Bother Me While I'm Living Forever", the last Scott Miller song on What If It Works, the collaboration with Anton Barbeau.

Talk Talk - Runeii

and "A New Jerusalem" on Mark Hollis, and the two minutes of silence that follows it.

I've heard "Wanda Lu" by Tim Buckley described as a particularly unfortunate example of a weak final song.

bowie is the most boring possible answer to this question

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk3aSPZlSHs

my new answer to this is Tyro (and by extension Toenut) bowing out of music entirely with Remember When We Were Very Young, which isn't on the internet, and thus remains my secret and you'll have to trust me

hilariously enough, most of the suggestions upthread weren't even the last song from the last album in the end

obviously this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myVEzbFVO0Y

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - voodoo chile (slight return)