Songs that don't end, but suddenly stop

16 and Love You More by the Buzzcocks

Not sure those two count?

Actually, I can't remember how 16 ends!

From memory, "Negativland" by Neu!

"Every Second Counts" by New Order (more or less).

Mystery Zone - Spoon

^good one

The Dinosaur Jr version of Just Like Heaven

Real Estate's homage to She's So Heavy, Two Arrows

Pretty sure a song on the third Strokes album does this... maybe "Ize of the World"?

Swell Maps have several - Big Empty Field, Collision with a Frogman, Doctor at Cake
Obviously early Mothers and Faust pioneered harsh tape cuts and did it a lot

Really there are two main flavors of this, Beatles-style where there's a shocking silence after, and Zappa/Swell Maps style where the harsh edit takes you to another chaotic song

Agree the Buzzcocks ones don't fit this; there's another thread where songs are listed where when the singer says stop, the song stops, sixteen should be there if it isn't

"In It for the Money" by Supergrass.

"Red" by XTC.

Don't know if this would also include songs where the coda is a jumble of chaotic noise that suddenly cuts off - it's not as if the song is ending "in the middle". In that case, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" by Pere Ubu, and "In the Court of the Crimson King".

on the pixies thread someone linked to an article where i learned that "where is my mind" ends abruptly because they ran out of tape

Hit me with your Rhythm Stick

Pavement may have taken the Swell Maps cue on tracks like "Jackals, False Grails..."

xp "Hit Me" seems to come to a conclusion?

The Boo Radleys - Wilder

Yeah, Where is my Mind and Dig for Fire are edge cases, not exactly what this thread is looking for but close, and cool endings.

I never trust stories like "we ended it that way because we ran out of tape". That sounds like the songwriter imagining an effect he wants the ending to conjure.

The Fall: "Spectre Versus Rector", "C'n'C – S Mithering", others probably.

"Knew" by Leila (from Like Weather)

"White Car in Germany" by the Associates, which comes to an end before a coda returns and then is stopped abruptly.

"/BREATH" by Le Butcherettes

Elvis Costello: "Night Rally"

More Beatles, same album: Her Majesty

SPK - Wars of Islam

And probably many more in the early days of industrial.

xp "Hit Me" seems to come to a conclusion?

― visiting, Wednesday, January 5, 2022 9:38 PM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Almost. But.

Girls at Our Best! - "Getting Nowhere Fast"
His Name Is Alive - "The Other Body"

Mission of Burma - "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate." Peter Prescott yells just as the tape runs out.

Unrest, "Soon It Is Going to Rain" (another tape thing)
Deerhunter, "He Would Have Laughed"

The Downward Spiral has a bunch of these:

Mr. Self Destruct
Heresy
Ruiner
Big Man With A Gun
Eraser
Reptile

Other songs sort of have an outtro but either some instruments hard cut on their way out or the remaining guitars or atmospherics of the song just end:

Mr. Self Destruct
Hurt

Wonder how many songs do the opposite – start up as if the engineer suddenly hit record while the band was already playing

Royal Trux “Teeth” is kind of like that

The studio version of Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane” does that.

Tyler, The Creator does this a bunch, and it seems a big part of why his songs don't feel like radio singles.

Jandek – "European Jewel" on Ready for the House

The Smiths - Some girls are bigger than others

Every Smiths song ends suddenly, in my house anyway, when some idiot puts them on

I think what I was hoping to suss out in this thread was "the first occurrence of this happening on a well-known record" and I guess it's kinda apparent that The Beatles coined it, well done Beatles

Dinosaur Jr, Just Like Heaven

xp Kinda relates to Godard et al's editing a few years earlier.

Stereolab has a bunch of these, some of the ones that immediately come to mind:

Golden Ball
Transona Five (remastered version added an ending)
Space Moment

Nobody's mentioned Sex Pistols "No Fun"?

I never trust stories like "we ended it that way because we ran out of tape". That sounds like the songwriter imagining an effect he wants the ending to conjure.

― mig (guess that dreams always end), Wednesday, January 5, 2022 9:47 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

If you track down "Cheryl's coming home" off John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett's album, it really does sound like the tape ran out.

Talk Talk - “Ascension Day”

Wonder if any of the Beatles had heard Xenakis's "Bohor", from 1968, which cuts off on record as the roaring reaches a peak, just like "I Want You".

FWIW, the Red Crayola did that in '67 ("War Sucks").

Talk Talk - “Ascension Day”

Mentioned in the very first post of the thread.

Hole in the Sky, Sabbath

yeah there's some great editing between tracks on Sabotage

Woops missed that

"Ascension Day" isn't quite a cut to nothing, though, it segues straight into "After the Flood"?

Does this happen in any other medium aside from the finale of The Sopranos?

The film of Marat/Sade cuts to black in the middle of a riot, no credits, end of movie.

Something like this happens at the end of Two Lane Blacktop.

Yes, as if the film is melting in the projector a la Persona!

The last track on Black Dice's Beaches and Canyons does this--"Big Drop", at least on the CD...the vinyl version I had went into a locked groove.

John Cale - Ghost Story

excellent thread and fgti otm, there's something about the unexpected cut that's very affecting, takes me right back to hearing Abbey Road in like 1979 or whenever

I think every song on Immortal’s battles in the north does this.

"Metal Machine Music"

That was originally a locked groove, different kind of not ending

Tho I guess the first three tracks count

Yes, I should have specified Sides!

Realized that a song I voted for in the tracks poll this year kind of does this (and this time I ctrl-F'ed) - Self Esteem's "I Do This All the Time."

The music tapers, and she starts speaking as though starting another verse, and then the song cuts mid-sentence: "We laid there in the darkness and you were asleep/ And I wasn't checking my phone for a moment and I felt..."

'06 by vince staples

Does this happen in any other medium aside from the finale of The Sopranos?

Yeah Dhalgren does exactly the same thing.

And Pink Floyd The Wall

On the ceeenema side, the final shot of Hal Hartley's Henry Fool (1997) cuts off in an ambiguous way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuCmF3l_bqQ

It's not as abrupt/unresolved as The Sopranos, I guess (also, Hartley was likely influenced by Godard, who is mentioned above... not sure I ever made it to the end of a Godard film, though. Lmao!)

I think what I was hoping to suss out in this thread was "the first occurrence of this happening on a well-known record" and I guess it's kinda apparent that The Beatles coined it, well done Beatles

Now hold on there. "Sticky Sticky", the b-side of 1910 Fruitgum Company's "1-2-3 Red Light" does this and it was released almost a year and half earlier. This track sounds like they were given three minutes of tape to fill (and three minutes to write and record a song) and they kept recording till the tape ran out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKJ60B_Twoo

^ amazed nobody has sampled this yet!

Back when lyrics, y'know, meant something, not like today's crap music

"a well known record", though I hope 1910 Fruitful Company has its day

Finnegan's Wake with its cyclical ending might not count but it kind feels similar. The abrupt "Where?" ending of the Ithaca chapter feels more like it

I lent out my copy of Bouvard et Pecuchet but I remember feeling that the way the novel ended (i.e. it was unfinished) was probably the best-possible way to conclude a book on that form/subject

It was the b-side of a single that got to #5 in the charts, so I think it's safe to say a lot of people heard it - even if it was only once.

More than "Big Empty Field" by Swell Maps, that's for sure!

I'm always curious about that - how many buyers at the time actually flipped a record to hear the B-side?
I think of the scene from the Assayas film L'Eau Froide, set in the early 70s, where the kids play "Around the Bend" repeatedly but never "Run Through the Jungle".

Would Mr. Bungle's Pink Cigarette count?

I think I've found an even earlier example of this. On the 1961 album The Best of Jimmy Reed, no less than four of the songs cut off with an obvious tape splice, sometimes in the middle of a measure. This probably has more to do with editing around the peculiarities of the live performance than a self-conscious mixing/mastering decision, because a couple of the songs end with the end of the performance, and the others fade out.

A newer example is the entirety of Whack World by Tierra Whack; IIRC she didn’t have a good ending for a song and they decided to spin the whole album in the same “Instagram friendly” 1 min per song/video format

I think I've found an even earlier example of this. On the 1961 album The Best of Jimmy Reed, no less than four of the songs cut off with an obvious tape splice, sometimes in the middle of a measure.

That's excellent.

This probably has more to do with editing around the peculiarities of the live performance than a self-conscious mixing/mastering decision

seems like something similar is up on Arthur Russell's 'Tower of Meaning', I don't really know what the deal is but would really like to know. I believe some of the tracks are sped up and others are slowed down.

Wilco - Poor Places (cuts off before the last "Foxtrot")

“Common Sense” (on Schmilco) cuts off in the middle of an instrumental part.

Deafheaven - Mombasa

XTC "Red" - End of side 1 on Go2

Occurred to me that they do this a lot in industrial music for dramatic effect, to highlight the I guess manufactured/cutnpaste/triggered/sampled qualities of the music. Like here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iprm5f78CA0

Somebody please upload that "sudden ending" version of "A House Is Not a Motel" to YouTube pronto!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_At4UAv4WUQ

Is this not it?

Arcade Fire - [Antichrist Television Blues]

Guided By Voices must have a bunch of these

(xp) No.

Yes, that "House is not a Motel" is a modern remix, and it seems to me that the ending of the track is the end of the performance.

(xp) I think it is..

There was a combination of someone mixing up the song titles on web boards, but listening to it there it seems to be :
1) A longer 'fade', and
2) The sudden ending, i.e. it drops rather than fading out completely.

It isn't, my (vinyl) copy had the sudden ending and that definitely isn't it. For a start, the version you posted is a completely different mix and it lasts longer and, most importantly of all, there's no fade at all in the sudden ending version.

I had the notion in my head that at least some of the tracks on Twin Infinitives do this... but listening back, they don't, the band really "stops playing" and the "end" of each "song."

Twin Infinitives kinda has the same effect though because of the excruciatingly long silences between tracks

Was listening to Floating Points’ Elaenia yesterday and the album’s closing song ‘Peroration Six’ does this after a big crescendo.

Several tracks on NY & CH's Barn just stop, awkwardly, like somebody dropped somethin.

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, "The Sun Goes Down", September 1967. Again, the b-side to a Top 10 hit, so pretty well known. Kind of sounds like a mistake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XEMGnXOZMs