I’ve spent this afternoon listening to INXS’ Shabooh Shoobah and Morrissey’s Your Arsenal (don’t start…). What I’ve realised they share is a final song that is upbeat and hooky, that was released as a single, and that remain(ed) a fan favourite and live staple. It’s as if the songs want you to flip the album over and start again, rather than offering the deliberate closed curtain of a grand ballad, space opera, existential nightmare and/or three-part epic. On looking at my collection, I couldn’t find many others that buck the trend . It’s almost received wisdom that that last song has a definite role to play. All well and good, I like the format, but any of your favourite LPs break the mould similarly with a single- or encore-worthy sing-a-long? (Since you ask: Don’t Change, Tomorrow)
Happier Endings
I don’t know the Moz song but Don’t Change is a corker. My memory tells me it was my introduction to INXS (or Inks as Alan Ferguson used to call them when I played him Listen like Thieves but he was from Dundee.) on the tiny Australian section of Live Aid.
I will investigate your theory as I’ve finally got my ancient Aiwa system hooked up to my iPod…quaint I know. We’re having a new kitchen and the worktops are trapped in a port somewhere so we’ve been in a state of flux in Freddy Towers for a while. Sorry, bit of a digression there. Good post!
I’d pretty much accepted the, er, accepted wisdom that Inks (as my Italian aunties called them when they first came out) only really got good from (most probably) The Swing and (most definitely) Kick, but Shabooh Shoobah was playing in a record shop in Katoomba today and I realised it’s a really good LP so I picked it up.
(I had originally included REM’s It’s the End of the World as the upbeat single-worthy closer of Document, but then realised it actually closes the Eponymous compilation (actually finishing Side 1 on Document) so doesn’t count.)
The Swing. For a while it was my absolute favourite album. I listened to it a while back and I don’t think it’s aged too well . Listen like Thieves is underrated I reckon and Kick was huge obvs. Still sounds ok but of course now they were huge, I couldn’t like them! There last great song… Baby don’t cry, huge chorus.
Welcome to Wherever You Are has, this far out, proven to be their most cohesive and lasting for me. Should have been granted much more weight. Full Moon Dirty Hearts also seemed to get lost as their star waned. Some great songs. The Swing still stands up for me sonically (as does Dekadance – been a while since I uttered the phrase “Great twelve-inch!” after a song!) The singles aside, Kick sounds a little to brittle to my ears these days. Haven’t Listened (to) Thieves for a while, but loved it back then. Saw them on that tour – Sydney 1984 or 85.
Ah, I can see your a true fan! Didn’t really go for the early stuff, it was definitely Thieves that did it for me, a bit more guitary maybe than their other albums.
You don’t see INXS discussed much on these pages, do you?
Yeah, I also really like Welcome To Wherever You Are. I distinctly remember buying it (on cassette!) with low expectations after X, and being pleasantly surprised by each song. There’s no doubt they were trying to emulate Achtung Baby (as were many, many others at the time) but for them it worked.
My favourite has to be Kick though. I get what you say about it sounding “brittle”, but as a time capsule of 1987 it’s hard to beat.
Sorry for the Partridgeism, but their Greatest Hits album is stupendous.
The Jam’s “Setting Sons” rather bizarrely finishes on “Heatwave” an upbeat cover version. The rest is a bleak concept album so maybe Weller put it there as a sign of how music can act as an escape from the drudgery of life?
I’ve always had a real soft spot for The Jam’s version of Heatwave…no, it might not get close to the original but it’s full of spark and life. As for it’s inclusion on the album, hadn’t Weller just run out of songs?
Isn’t it effectively a cover of the Who’s cover of Heatwave?
He’s right you know…
Aja concludes with the most radio-friendly track, Josie. There is a question mark about what she has been up to but it’s definitely a party song.
I am disappoint with the content of this thread, which seems to be about old pop records.
Should have seen what I was *going* to call it…
Erk!
David Bowie had his head turned by meeting John Lennon and dumped the big ballad, It’s Gonna Be Me, from Young Americans, replacing it with Fame. What a song! However, I never felt it belonged on Young Americans, being more akin to Stationtostation with the new, dazzling rhythm section. Still. What a song!
I think Arabia may be his greatest album closer. All that spacey electronica on side two and then you get this mutant disco track.
And Arabia is a better invitation to go back to side two, whereas Fame draws the album to a close.
Points towards STS and beyond, too.
Find Fame pretty annoying actually, but would say it fits better on YA than anywhere else.
Didn’t know this until recently but the cover of Yoong Americans was inspired by a picture of choreographer and “Mickey!” hitmaker Toni Basil.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/55380270394204848/
Buckets Of Rain is a bit mixed lyrically but it has humour and a jaunty tune, if you like that kind of thing. Certainly a relatively upbeat finish compared to the sadness and anger that came before.
He sounds like he’s taking the piss out of the whole suffering-artist schtick. It works very well as an ending, without actually undermining what’s gone before.
Free – Fire and Water.
Last track – Alright now – most upbeat track on the album.
Marvin Gaye’s sultry, magnificent ‘Midnight Love’ takes a turn for the bouncier with the totally joyous ‘My Love is Waiting’. Thanks are given in the spoken intro to Jesus, Mr Larkinon(?) and others before the bass line lifts you off the floor and away we go. Blissful, euphoric and ineffably catchy. Try it!
Larkin Arnold, former CBS Records (Sony Music) senior executive VP, convinced Marvin Gaye to leave his flat in Belgium and sign with Columbia Records.
The last track proper of Buzzcocks A Different Kind Of Tension (ignoring the brief radio tuning compilation of the non-album singles – Radio 9) has a foot in both camps.
I Belive is an epic album closer, proof that they are indeed a brilliant band, and makes you want to re-appraise a sometimes difficult album (certainly in comparison to the previous 2)
INXS might have form with upbeat closing tracks – Kick finishes with Tiny Daggers
How about Tomorrow Never Knows? Pretty up-tempo (and much faster than the first version on Anthology 2) and kicks the door open to another dimension at the same time.
For sing-along ending I think of Waiting For The Great Leap Forward which closes Billy Bragg’s Workers Playtime.
Don’t You Want Me? at the end of The Human League’s Dare is both the big hit and something for you to holler along to in the rear view mirror.
During the final minutes of Out There Somewhere? on Orbital’s In Sides you actually feel yourself escaping the Earth’s gravitational influence, which is quite bracing..
(Incidentally, not having heard Your Arsenal in a very long time, I was convinced that the last song was the Ziggyesque shot-in-the-arm of I Know It’s Going To Happen Someday and had quite forgotten about Tomorrow).
Good selections re Bragg and Human League, both of which in my collection also. Tomorrow is a great song, though replaced on the vinyl reissue with an inferior US mix. The album still stands as his finest, alongside Vauxhall and I.
I suppose a single-worthy song feels counterintuitive as an album closer: “Here’s a catchy song you’ll like, now go and buy the album! Oh, you already have.”
Prairie Rose closes Roxy’s Country Life on a real high (but not just another high…).
I would think that Train In Vain would fit the bill at the end of London Calling. So upbeat, hooky and out of keeping with the rest of the album that they left it off the first pressing track listing…