Some songs put it all upfront. The first 10s of Stop! In The Name of Love are so perfect and thrilling you really should stop listening then and there, the next 2:43 can’t help be an anticlimax. But others take a different route, holding back the good stuff for as long as possible. Just when you’re convinced that’s it, a chorus or a melodic line swoops in and the previous five minutes all make sense. As a dyed-in-the-wool Delayed Gratifier I love this.
Dance music is particularly good at this – so have a listen to this track from the excellent LTJ Bukem compilation Earth Vol 1. For 5 mins Pablo assembles the standard textures of late-nineties D and B – clattering biscuit-tin drums, slow and deep looping basslines and liquid washes of synth – layering in the distance a snatch of horns here, a female vocal there – then at 6:54 everything comes together to reveal a Gamble and Huffesque layered soul song filtered through drum and bass. Just wonderful, and all the more wonderful IMHO for being so slowly built towards.
So your suggestions for songs that keep the best stuff back until the last possible moment.
Billy Wilder (or someone like that) said about screenwriting, “You have to make them laugh, you have to make them cry but most of all you have to make them wait.”
Then there’s Jacques, the bowling alley scoundrel from the Simpsons who said to himself as he prepared for a date with Marge…
“To the most beautiful moment in life, better than the deed, better than the memory, the moment of… anticipation.”
It’s not really an example of keeping the best until last as it occurs right through the song but Baker Street has a really good moment in anticipation. Right near the end the vocals finish and you expect that famous sax solo to kick in but it doesn’t, you get a long guitar break and then… ahh! The sax! Finally!
A lovely groove from the start of the song but after the bridge at around 3:17 things get going properly. Jeff Porcaro’s the main man here, stepping up a gear … subtly but enough to raise the hairs on the neck. Just glorious.
Relax.
Don’t Do It.
When You Wanna Drum solo.
Starless by King Crimson was the first tune to spring to mind – slow start – middle bit that takes the piss with that one note guitar solo – but what an ending…
Great OP! Gosh, I have loads, it’s one of my fav things in music. But this one never disappoints. Still gets me. Every time
http://youtu.be/hgPSpVUg0iM ❤️
Never ones to rush, Cowboy Junkies have always excelled at this, with this being a peak, saving the best, an instrumental coda, slowly building, after the song, as such, is already sung and over: