albums that end terribly

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This thread is inspired by Mista Mista at the end of The Score and this thread: albums that end in an incredible way . We should talk about songs that are bad, embarassing cases for quality control at record labels, or plain old 'what the fuck' moments
(the unpleasant kind).

Also, Hangin' Out by The Knife ("I keep my dick hangin' out of my pants / so I can point at what I want"). Almost as ridiculous as the strange "Mothafuckaaa" scheming goin down on Mista.

― trees (treesessplode), Friday, 31 March 2006 04:15 (twenty years ago)

the cover of "We'll Meet Again" at the end of Mr Tambourine Man was supposed to be a joke, apparently. absolutely fucking hilarious - well done boys. the first 3 albums finish badly, but this is the worst of the bunch.

and on the subject of closing an album with a terrible cover, i can't stand "Superman" at the end of Life's Rich Pageant. from what i can tell, however, consensus may be against me on that one.

― Lee F# (fsharp), Friday, 31 March 2006 06:52 (twenty years ago)

Love's Da Capo...for the win!

― Cunga (Cunga), Friday, 31 March 2006 06:56 (twenty years ago)

Theres a lot of fine albums that get regarded as terrible because of a rubbish ending track that leaves a bad taste.

Similarly, some OK albums that finish with a wonderful final track get regarded as perfect.

If "Forever Changes" had finished without "You set the scene", it would be regarded as a great album still. But with it, it's one of the best albums of all time.

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 31 March 2006 07:02 (twenty years ago)

An obscure one, but one that deserves infamy: the band Leomoon (which included Erin Morgan, who would go on to become A Girl Called Eddy) put out a self-titled album that ends with a hidden track. But the hidden track comes only after 98 other tracks, each lasting 2-3 seconds each, consisting of silence, dissonant noise, and/or laughter. Awesome!

― brittle-lemon (brittle-lemon), Friday, 31 March 2006 07:29 (twenty years ago)

The Wall.

overdramatic to the extreme.

― Tom White (lunaticgrass), Friday, 31 March 2006 07:45 (twenty years ago)

most Quasi album are have bad ending.not terrible, just bad.

― hard to turn me on, Friday, 31 March 2006 10:30 (twenty years ago)

The Cortege by Mike Westbrook.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Friday, 31 March 2006 10:35 (twenty years ago)

New Order's last two albums belong on this thread.

― JimD (JimD), Friday, 31 March 2006 10:41 (twenty years ago)

haha protection by massive attack pwns.

― The Lex (The Lex), Friday, 31 March 2006 10:50 (twenty years ago)

the beach boys - summer days and summer nights

a really strong, consistent album that seems to peter out with a glut of joke tracks, instrumentals, outtakes at the end. They're all fun but it kind of feels a bit of a whimper rather than a bang.

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 31 March 2006 10:59 (twenty years ago)

Bad but brilliant? Bonzo Dog Band, Let's Make Up and Be Friendly ends with a psychotic laugh that devolves into a recorded "skip" so that the laugh stutters and repeats and then abruptly ends.

― J Arthur Rank (Quin Tillian), Friday, 31 March 2006 11:06 (twenty years ago)

"Slush." Maybe the best thing they ever did. Certainly the most frightening.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Friday, 31 March 2006 12:02 (twenty years ago)

Strapping Young Lad's "Alien." But I love it anyway.

― ng-unit, Friday, 31 March 2006 12:09 (twenty years ago)

haha protection by massive attack pwns.

HOW MANY TIMES! That cover is the best thing on the album.

One that really comes to mind for me is 'It's A Shame About Ray' by The Lemonheads which ends with a record-company tacked-on addition of the cover of 'Mrs Robinson'.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Friday, 31 March 2006 13:16 (twenty years ago)

cunga otm; i think ive only gotten through it once.

― pssst - badass revolutionary art! (plsmith), Friday, 31 March 2006 13:56 (twenty years ago)

byrds own this thread - see also Notorious Byrd Bros., Dr. Byrds, Ballad Of Easy Rider

― timmy tannin (pompous), Friday, 31 March 2006 14:51 (twenty years ago)

ELO - Out of the Blue

It always felt like the last two tracks were just tacked on to fill the last side of an otherwise cohesive album.

― b minus (capn. entropy), Friday, 31 March 2006 14:53 (twenty years ago)

Hex Enduction Hour by The Fall is let down by 'And This Day'. One suspects Smith intended it that way.

― robert in SLC, Friday, 31 March 2006 15:15 (twenty years ago)

If that's the one that goes on for 18 minutes, ach no.

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 31 March 2006 15:19 (twenty years ago)

b minus otm - birmingham blues is a big ugly scratch on a beautiful diamond.

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 31 March 2006 15:20 (twenty years ago)

Neil Young has done this more than once:

"Natural Beauty" on Harvest Moon
"Mother Earth" on Raggedy Glory
"A Dream That Can Last" on Sleeps with Angels

but he has lotsa great album closers too ("Four Strong Winds" etc)

― Taylor, Friday, 31 March 2006 15:22 (twenty years ago)

Hex Enduction Hour by The Fall is let down by 'And This Day'. One suspects Smith intended it that way.

-- robert in SLC (herecomejul...), March 31st, 2006.

you crazy

― latebloomer: band to the planet mars (latebloomer), Friday, 31 March 2006 15:23 (twenty years ago)

any album that ends with like 70 silent tracks till you get the last song ends terribly and i always found that kinda retarded.. i think hex enduction hour is somehow enhanced by the album ruining 'and this day' just because its so long its like an endurance test!!

― gwolfcow, Friday, 31 March 2006 15:27 (twenty years ago)

"Okay, talk to me about the future of Public Enemy."

"The future of Public Enemy got a..."

Fear of a Black Planet was my first CD, purchased in conjunction with my first CD player.

When I got to the end and that's what I heard, I thought I had perhaps purchased a CD player that didn't have the capability to play longer discs.

Hey, I was 13 or something.

― Justin Shumaker (shueytexas), Friday, 31 March 2006 15:32 (twenty years ago)

Oh god, and albums that have disc filling stagnant sub-eno-by-numbers soundscapes shoved on the end! There's loads of those...Pulp's This Is Hardcore, The first Polyphonic Spree album, the WHOLE SECOND HALF of J.M.Jarre's Waiting For Cousteau, even (ahem) Queen's Made In Heaven...

― JimD (JimD), Friday, 31 March 2006 15:35 (twenty years ago)

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon; the "...but the sun is eclipsed by the moo-oon" ending always sounded abrupt and anticlimactic to me, like they couldn't come up with anything better.

― Joe (Joe), Friday, 31 March 2006 16:49 (twenty years ago)

I have to say, though, I love the ending of Fear of a Black Planet

― Joe (Joe), Friday, 31 March 2006 16:50 (twenty years ago)

Notorious Byrd Bros

Oh man, so true.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 31 March 2006 17:00 (twenty years ago)

Hex Enduction Hour by The Fall is let down by 'And This Day'

Even worse, the last three tracks are "Who Makes the Nazis", "Iceland" AND "And This Day"

― Dadaismus Is A Very Magic Fellow (Dada), Friday, 31 March 2006 17:27 (twenty years ago)

i can't stand "Superman" at the end of Life's Rich Pageant

Step onto the gallows, sir.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, 31 March 2006 17:29 (twenty years ago)

the kinks -- phobia

totally dull record, which was certainly not unexpected from the kinks in 1993. but the final track "scattered" is so far beyond everything that comes before it on the record, almost on a par with anything on muswell hillbillies. come to find out ray davies actually wrote it in the early 70s and had been holding it back.

― Lawrence the Looter (Lawrence the Looter), Friday, 31 March 2006 19:27 (twenty years ago)

"Who Makes the Nazis' and 'Iceland' are fantastic, like everything preceeding them. 'And This Day', err, isn't.

― robert in SLC, Friday, 31 March 2006 19:34 (twenty years ago)

Neil Young has done this more than once

Yes. Another two are Through My Sails on Zuma and Baby What You Want Me To Do from Broken Arrow.

― kornrulez6969 (TCBeing), Friday, 31 March 2006 19:37 (twenty years ago)

The New Pornographers albums tend to end on their weakest songs.

― kornrulez6969 (TCBeing), Friday, 31 March 2006 19:38 (twenty years ago)

Spoon's Kill the Moonlight just kind of rolls over and dies about halfway through. Gimme Fiction is similarly flawed, I think.

― Jessie the Monster (scarymonsterrr), Friday, 31 March 2006 19:39 (twenty years ago)

Blonde Redhead - Misery Is a Butterfly ending with Equus....it totally and completely ruins the mood of the whole record....they should've just given the song to Deerhoof and called it a day.

― bobby.lasers (bobby.lasers), Friday, 31 March 2006 21:34 (twenty years ago)

I know that the end of "Every Little Counts" on Brotherhood is supposed to be clever. It probably is once. But it makes me turn off the album when that song starts.

― Douglas (Douglas), Friday, 31 March 2006 21:50 (twenty years ago)

The end of Tales From Topographic Oceans has never sounded quite right to me. If a band is going to make such a big statement, they should wrap things up with a big fuckoff ending. Instead they set up a huge finale on "Ritual" only to end the song with a whimper. Never been too sure about the ending of Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? either, because I don't know if "Slut" is meant to be taken at face value or as a parody - either way, it's a bit of a letdown. The younger me hated the ending of the Red House Painters' rollercoaster album - two long depressing tracks followed by the short and sweet "Brown Eyes" as if what preceded had never happened.

― Lotta Continua (Damian), Friday, 31 March 2006 22:04 (twenty years ago)

Man, my copy of Brotherhood has State Of The Nation tagged on the end, which is even worse. So yeah, that's three points to NO.

― JimD (JimD), Friday, 31 March 2006 22:40 (twenty years ago)

Husker Du - New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig both end with 2 or 3 tracks of filler, like they'd used up all the good songs by that point of the album. Did they sequence the albums in the order the songs were written or what?

― Matt #2 (Matt #2), Friday, 31 March 2006 22:48 (twenty years ago)

can - tago mago. though bring me coffee or tea is technically the last song, augmn and peking o are so disappointing cuz they make me press the skip button on an otherwise flawless album.

and the feelies cover of paint it black is pretty terrible too. i usually leave it off when i burn the cd for friends just because it's the last song and it wont screw with the original sequencing of the album.

― buyabiznatch (buyabiznatch), Saturday, 1 April 2006 00:52 (twenty years ago)

"augmn and peking o are so disappointing cuz they make me press the skip button on an otherwise flawless album."

crazy talk

― latebloomer: a power and finesse vocalist (latebloomer), Saturday, 1 April 2006 01:00 (twenty years ago)

The Wall.
overdramatic to the extreme.

not that i disagree, but it's puzzling that you only notice this at the end.

― erklie (erklie), Saturday, 1 April 2006 01:09 (twenty years ago)

The New Pornographers albums tend to end on their weakest songs.
not miss teem wordpower though

― erklie (erklie), Saturday, 1 April 2006 01:10 (twenty years ago)

"augmn and peking o are so disappointing cuz they make me press the skip button on an otherwise flawless album."
crazy talk

-- latebloomer

Agreed. Also if you excise them you're left with about 45 minutes instead of seventy-odd. Really dismembering the album.

― jimnaseum (jimnaseum), Saturday, 1 April 2006 02:26 (twenty years ago)

Man, my copy of Brotherhood has State Of The Nation tagged on the end, which is even worse. So yeah, that's three points to NO.
-- JimD (ji...), March 31st, 2006.

if we're including reissues of albums by 1980s singles artists, then gang of four - entertainment, which has some totally inane, scatterbrained ep tacked onto the end.

― lf (lfam), Saturday, 1 April 2006 03:55 (twenty years ago)

You suck.

Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time rocks.

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Saturday, 1 April 2006 04:18 (twenty years ago)

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