Bookends / Music

So the song ended...

Some of these examples are spoilers, so entries have been folderized. Proceed with caution. You Have Been Warned.

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A

• The first verse of Aesop Rock's Tuesday begins and ends with Aesop remarking on a mushroom growing in his car.
• Aerosmith's Music from Another Dimension opens and ends with a Twilight Zone-like narration adequate to the album title.
• AFI's album Sing the Sorrow has deliberate static between the bonus tracks and after the last one. If you listen to that album on repeat, it is virtually impossible to pick out when it switches from "This Time Imperfect" (the last bonus track) to the aptly titled "Miseria Cantare (The Beginning)".
• Afro Celt Sound System's album Release begins with the title track, then ends with its instrumental remix "Release It".
• Agalloch's album The Mantle features the same acoustic guitar riff in the first (instrumental) song "A Celebration for the Death of Man..." and in the end of the next-to-last song "...and the Great Cold Death of the Earth".
• Rina Aiuchi did this on most of her albums with the song titles - the first track would often be the title track, with the final track on all but two of her studio albums being something very similarly titled, that often included the album's title. To wit:
  • Be Happy starts with "be happy?" and ends with "be happy."
  • POWER OF WORDS starts with "POWER OF WORDS" and ends with "Can you feel the POWER OF WORDS?"
  • PLAYGIRL starts with "PLAYGIRL" and ends with "GIRLS PLAY"
  • DELIGHT starts with "DELIGHT" and ends with "I'll be delighted"
  • TRIP starts with "TRIP" and ends with "A DAY TRIP"
  • THANX starts with "THANX" and ends with "thankful for the birthday"
• Alphaville's Afternoons in Utopia. The first track is an echo of the word "night". The last track is the limerick "There was a young lady named Bright / Whose speed was much faster than light / She departed one day / In the relative way / And returned on the previous..."
• Altar of Plagues Sol EP starts and ends with very similar-sounding ominous electronic noises.
• Daniel Amos' Doppelgänger begins and ends with songs named "Hollow Man"; both use the same backing music, while the text spoken over them differs.
• Namie Amuro did this with her album PLAY - opener "Hide & Seek" and closer "Pink Key" both have a lively, marching feeling to their beats, which was done deliberately as Amuro wanted the album to open and close with a similar sound, as though the listener was marching "into" and then, eventually, "out of" the album.
• Arcade Fire's album The Suburbs starts and ends with tracks of the same name.
• The Avalanches' Since I Left You: The eponymous first track has the lines, "Since I left you, I found a world so new." The last song, "Extra Kings" has these lines at the end: "I try but I just can't get you... ever since the day I left you..."

B

• Johann Sebastian Bach's Magnificat reprises the music of its opening number at its very end. Meaningfully, the lyrics for this reprise begin with "Sicut erat in principio" ("As it was in the beginning").
• Barenaked Ladies' Gordon ends with the song "Crazy", which suddenly crashes into a short reprise of the opening "Hello City" in the fade-out.
• Mirrored by experimental rock group Battles begins with a song called "Race: In," which features a recurring xylophone theme. The last song, "Race: Out" sees a brief return of the same theme just before the last repeating guitar pattern.

• Blind Melon's Soup starts with an unlisted intro (officially called "Hello Goodbye") featuring Shannon Hoon singing over a brass band. The closing song "Lemonade" is based around a very similar melody to this intro, and at the very end of the song the same brass band comes in, playing a faster improvisation this time.
• The second Self-Titled Album by jazz-pop band Blood Sweat And Tears begins and ends with a rendition of Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie".
• David Bowie:
  • Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) opens with "It's No Game" (Part 1) and closes with "It's No Game (Part 2)", both of which are different versions of the same song. Furthermore, the first sound heard on the album is a film reel being started up, and the last is a film reel running out.
  • Black Tie White Noise begins and ends with the sound of wedding bells in "The Wedding" and "The Wedding Song".
• Ein deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms begins and ends with the same word, selig (blessed).
• The first and last things heard on Braids' Frame & Canvas are the sounds of a distant AM radio station.
• Michelle Branch:
  • Hotel Paper opens and closes with 40s-style horn music.
  • The song "Breathe", also on the same album, starts and ends with the same guitar riff and lyrics.
• Brand New's "Daisy" begins and ends with a woman singing the same gospel passage.
• Brave Saint Saturn's The Light of Things Hoped For begins with "Prologue," a spoken-word piece played over ambient electronic music. This electronic music is reused as the intro to "Daylight", the last track of the album.
• Meta example: The first song that Brooks & Dunn ever performed together was their debut single "Brand New Man". It was also the closing number at their 2010 farewell concert at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.
• Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 3 in D Minor opens with a theme played by solo trumpet, and ends with a D Major restatement of that theme by the entire orchestra.

C

• The final track on the Candlemass album Tales of Creation closes with the same opening riff as the album's intro.
• Vanessa Carlton's signature song "A Thousand Miles" uses the same distinctive piano riff (which in part made the song popular), heard at the very start of the song, at the song's end.
• "This Is Love", the last song on Mary Chapin Carpenter's album Stones on the Road, ends with the melody of the first song "Why Walk When You Can Fly" played on the piano.
• The first track of Cascada's Everytime We Touch is the title track. The last track is an unplugged version of the song.
• Childish Gambino:
  • The beginning and ending of because the internet are similar-sounding; the start swoops upward, while the end swoops downward.
  • The opener on BTI, "Crawl", has "Who am I?" as the opening line. The closer, "Life: The Biggest Troll", has "I don't know who I am anymore" as one of the midsection lines.
  • His video for "Sober", as well. It begins and ends with Bino sitting at a takeout resturant in the exact same manner. A nearby clock is shown displaying 9:30 at the start and end as well.
• The Eric Church song "Like Jesus Does" begins and ends with the line "I'm a long-gone Waylon song on vinyl."
• Coheed and Cambria:
  • Second Stage Turbine Blade, has the song "Devils in Jersey City" (not the first song, but close to the beginning), which has a line towards the end—"Why won't you drive me home?". Towards the end of the album, we have "Junesong Provision", which has a line "To drive down...where's Wednesday? Where's Wednesday?". The last song (The End Complete V: On the Brink) of the last album (No World for Tomorrow) has the last line "so long, amory...please drive me home one last time..."
  • In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 begins with "The Ring in Return", which consists of an intro, then a short musical interlude, and then a male voice saying "Hello, Apollo, where should I begin?". In the lyric book, the last line of the last song (excluding the hidden one) is "Pray for us all...my dear Appollo (sic) I'll be burning Star IV" (the actual line that is sung is just "Pray for us all" over and over.)
  • In Good Apollo Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness, at the end of the first and beginning of the second track (the first song of the album's narrative) one can hear children making animal noises. As the music fades away in the final track, one of the children starts chiming in, saying, "I love you!" a few times.
• Coldplay:
  • A Rush of Blood to the Head: both the first and last song are 5:19 minutes long.
  • Viva la Vida begins with "Life in Technicolor" and ends with "The Escapist" which are both built around the same sample of music by Jon Hopkins.
  • "Spies" has the refrain "Spies hide out in every corner, but you can't touch them, 'cause they're all spies." But at the end of the song, "we" get over their control, and song ends "...but they can't touch you, cause they're just spies."
• Cornershop:
  • Woman's Gotta Have It opens with "6 a.m. Jullandar Shere" and ends (barring the inevitable Hidden Track) with the more upbeat version "7:20 a.m. Jullandar Shere".
  • Again disregarding the bonus track, Handcream for a Generation's Album Intro Track "Heavy Soup" is also reprised as the outro.

D

• Danielson's Tri-Danielson!!! (Alpha) opens with a crowd shouting "Tri-Danielson!" and then cheering. The followup album, Tri-Danielson!!! (Omega), ends with a crowd cheering and then shouting "Tri-Danielson!"
• Dead Kennedys' Plastic Surgery' Disasters begins and ends with chaotic, noisy jamming and narration by a deliberately cloying narrator (Melissa Webb, credited as The Ghost Of Christmas Past). The backing music at the start of the album even picks up exactly where the backing music at the end left off.
• Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism begins and ends with a sound much like a car running.
• Executive Meddling led to Deftones recording a shorter, heavier version of "Pink Maggit" called "Back To School (Mini-Maggit)" and making it the first track on a reissue of White Pony: Thus that version of the album begins and ends with different versions of the same song.
• Deltron 3030's Self-Titled Album begins and ends with the same spoken monologue by Damon Albarn - the second time it's a deliberately poor quality recording with intentional playback errors.
• The first track of DHT's Listen To Your Heart is the title track. The last track is an unplugged version of the song.
• Casanova by The Divine Comedy starts with a spoken "hello" and ends with a sung "goodbye".
• Graham Lewis' wracked scream both begins and ends Dome's "The Red Tent I & II" on Dome 2.
• The Doors's song "The End" starts and ends with the words "This is the end."
• Dream Theater:
  • Metropolis Pt 2 begins and ends with the Hypnotherapist speaking. The final song on that album, "Finally Free" even has its own; it begins and ends with the words "Open your eyes, Nicholas".
  • The song "The Great Debate" from Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence begins with a singe synth riff, and instruments are added gradually, along with spoken samples. The song ends in pretty much the same way, but in reverse, as instruments are gradually removed until only the original synth riff remains.
  • Octavarium begins and ends with the same note, with an octave difference. Lampshaded with the last line of the last song (also titled "Octavarium"): "This story ends where it began."
  • Systematic Chaos begins and ends with parts one and two of "In the Presence of Enemies".

E

• Electric Light Orchestra:
  • Eldorado opens with a spoken monologue. The final line, "High on a hill, in Eldorado", is looped over the album finale.
  • Time : The first song ("Prologue") starts with the same snippet of sound that the last song ("Epilogue") ends on.
• The final passage of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Tarkus suite includes a reprise of part of the opening passage. When Steven Wilson was given the task of remixing the album, he was stumped when he couldn't find the reprise on the multitrack master - until he realised that the reprise was actually taken from the opening passage.

F

• The Fall's This Nation's Saving Grace begins with "Mansion" and ends with "To NK Roachment: Yarbles"; the former is an instrumental version of the latter.
• Fatboy Slim's Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars, where the end of the last song ("Song For Shelter") is a more echoey reprise of the beginning of the first ("Talking Bout My Baby").
• Friends of Dean Martinez's On the Shore starts and ends with the clicking of a film-projector.
• Fall Out Boy's album Infinity on High begins with chatter and ends with applause, as though it were a live show.
• Flobots: "Handlebars" begins and ends with the simple "I can ride my bike with no handlebars", signifying that things eventually go back to normal.
• A Flock of Seagulls' The Story of a Young Heart starts off with the title track and ends with a slight reprise of the song at the end of "Suicide Day".

G

• Peter Gabriel:
  • The video for "Steam" from Us begins with the view of space and stars with Earth closing in and ends with zooming in on somebody's skin, brief glimpse of cellular structure, DNA, individual atoms and inter-atomic space which becomes the interstellar space.
  • His song "Big Time" from So begins and ends with him saying "Hi there!" (This is only in the video, though; on its own, the song only has it at the beginning.)
• Gearwhore's Drive begins and ends with different mixes of "Passion".
• Several Genesis albums do this:
  • Selling England by the Pound ends with a short piece that is basically a reprise of the opener, "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight".
  • A Trick of the Tail opens with "Dance on a Volcano" and ends with "Los Endos", which both have many of the same riffs and melodies.
  • The live album Seconds Out plays around with them: It opens with "Squonk", which also has similarities to the other two songs mentioned, and ends with medley of "Dance on a Volcano" and "Los Endos".
• Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere starts and ends with the clicking of a film-projector.
• Bobby Goldsboro's "Summer (The First Time)", a song about a 17-year-old boy's first time with a 31-year-old woman, begins with the narrator reminiscing, "It was a hot afternoon/Last day of June...". After telling of the experience, he starts going through it again, starting with "It was a hot afternoon/Last day of June..." as the song gradually fades out.
• Good Charlotte:
  • Cardiology begins and ends with "Cardiology". The album begins with a 47-second version of the song, and ends with the full-length version.
  • A lyrical example in the song "The Chronicles of Life and Death" explains this trope as it often applies to people in Real Life. Also, the song starts and ends with the beeping of a lifeline. When the song ends, it goes flat.
  "You come in cold, You're covered in blood, They're all so happy you've arrived"
  "But now you're old, Cold covered in blood, Right back to where you started from"
• Lukas Graham's "Seven Years," begins with a film reel starting up and ends with a film reel winding down. Lyrically, it also starts and ends with a Title Drop ("once I was seven years old")
• Green Day:
  • 21st Century Breakdown begins with an introduction track that is echoed on the second last track, "American Eulogy". The second track on the album, "21st Century Breakdown", is echoed in the final track, "See the Light".
  • Revolution Radio: The first track is "Somewhere Now" and the penultimate is "Forever Now".
• The last of Edvard Grieg's Lyric Pieces, "Remembrances" (Op. 71 No. 7), is a waltz arrangement of the very first, "Arietta" (Op. 12 No. 1).
• The video for David Guetta's "She Wolf (Falling to Pieces)" both begins and ends with a women standing naked, with her back facing the camera.
• Gym Class Heroes' album The Papercut Chronicles as well as the sequel album The Papercut Chronicles II both have a robotic voice providing a rather odd narration at the beginning and end of the album, complete with analogies that don't make sense, Lampshade Hangings, and random tangents about something-or-other in order to introduce and close off the album.

H

• Havalina Rail Co.'s The Diamond in the Fish. The first track is an instrumental song, "The Theme from the Diamond in the Fish". The final track is "The Diamond in the Fish", a longer song that ends with the riff from "Theme".
• Paul Hindemith's Ludus tonalis frames its twelve fugues and eleven interludes by a "Praeludium" and a "Postludium," the latter being a complete retrograde inversion of the former (in Layman's Terms, the same music played backward, with all pitches inverted).
• Roger Hodgson's solo DVD Take the Long Way Home has him playing "Give a Little Bit" twice, once at the beginning and again at the end. The second time, of course, with more feeling (and audience participation).

I

• Jack Ingram's Live: Wherever You Are, features a studio track at either end: "Wherever You Are" and "Love You".
• Iron Maiden:
  • Seventh Son of a Seventh Son opens and ends with the excerpt quoted in Seven Deadly Sins.
  • "When the Wild Wind Blows" opens and ends with the wind blowing.
  • "Fear of the Dark"'s lyrics are reversed for intro and outro:
  "I am a man who walks alone
  And when I'm walking a dark road
  ...
  And when I'm walking a dark road
  I am a man who walks alone"
  • "Brave New World" has a twisted version: the first verse begins and ends with the lines "Dying swans, twisted wings" and "Bring this savage back home", during what is a slow intro. The outro of the song has the same slow pace, but uses solely those two lines.

J

• J Dilla's Donuts starts with a song called "Donuts (Outro)" and ends with "Welcome To The Show", also known as "Donuts (Intro)".
• Clock/tower bells are the first and last things heard on Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 (Interlude tracks "Pledge" and "Livin...In Complete Darkness", for the record).
• Jhariah's A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO FAKING YOUR DEATH has its first track include the line "He found the man before him had died," referring to how he's finally gone through with his plan to fake his death and start life anew. This lyric is repeated again in the final song, after he fully goes through with committing suicide.
• Elton John's Empty Sky goes through an unusual one of these. The last track is a medley of "Gulliver", a ballad, "It's Hay-Chewed", a jazzy instrumental jam, and a rough patchwork of the songs from the album, starting with "Empty Sky" (which opened the album) and ending with the scream that ended "Gulliver" (this section appropriately titled "Reprise").
• Justice's "Genesis" begins and ends with a series of trumpeting horns.

K

• King Crimson: In the Wake of Poseidon opens with "Peace — A Beginning" and closes with "Peace — An End", both of which share the same melody. Additionally, side two opens with "Peace — A Theme", forming a bookend within a bookend with "Peace — An End".
• Kitananx does this with his third album "The Story Of The Beard & The Music" where he has the first song of the album as "Starting The Beard", the song in the middle as "Growing The Beard" and the final song as "Harvest the Beard"
• The first and last tracks of the Kleptones' mashup album 24 Hours are "Still Start" and "Still Ending". The latter is a more-developed version of the former.
• Norwegian "black n' roll" band Kvelertak's debut Self-Titled Album begins and ends with the same word: Kvelertak.

L

• The last song on Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door, "I'm Gonna Crawl", is a blues song, much like the style of their first album. This would be the last album Led Zeppelin would record (Coda was a collection of outtakes).
• Lifehouse's song "You and Me" opens and closes with the lines What day is it? / And in what month? / This clock never seemed so alive...
• "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot begins and ends with lines about "the big lake they called 'Gitche Gumee,'" and how she "never gives up her dead."
• Linkin Park:
  • A meta example: Hybrid Theory starts with the song "Papercut". One More Light, which would be Chester’s last album, ends with "Sharp Edges".
  • The introduction of Reanimation is a minute long orchestral track. By the time the end of the disc comes around, it's revealed that the electronic-based remix to "Crawling" is built around that.
• Local H's As Good as Dead starts with "Manifest Density, Pt. 1" and ends with "Manifest Density, Pt. 2". It may or may not be a Lampshade Hanging that the last line of "Manifest Density, Pt. 1" is "...And it'll be back soon".

M

• On the 1997 re-release of New York-London-Paris-Munich by M, the bonus tracks are bookended by a fanfare.
• Madness' The Liberty Of Norton Folgate plays with this - the same melody as used in its Overture can be heard in the final song (the title track), but is not used at the very end of the song. The song itself, however, contains its own example - the second verse is "With a little bit of this, And a little bit of that, A little bit of what you like does you no harm, And you know that...". This is repeated at the end of the song.
• Side two of the Mahavishnu Orchestra's Birds of Fire album begins with a fade-in drumroll on "One Word" and ends with a fade-out drumroll on "Resolution". The band would often play these two songs as a medley despite being separated by other tracks on the album.
• Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony, after the final choral cadence, has the triumphant return of the opening "Veni, creator spiritus" theme on the "isoliert postiert" trumpets and trombones.
• The album Ever After by Marianas Trench provides a literal example, where the first track starts with "Once upon a time..." and the last track ends with "... and happily ever after we lived. The end."
• Marilyn Manson:
  • Antichrist Superstar begins and ends with the same spoken line. In addition, a different phrase bookends the final "act" of the album. Specifically, the beginning of "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" and the end of "Track 99 (Empty Sounds of Hate)"
  • Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death): Both the opening and final tracks open with metallic noises and a gun theme - in the first, "GodEatGod", a key noise, a door opening, footsteps, and a revolver being armed; the closer, "Count to Six and Die (The Vacuum of All Space Encompassing)" opens with that revolver cycling through empty chambers, while also ending in an acoustic Russian Roulette alluded by the title (not only the chambers cycle, but the hammer is heard hitting the empty space; when it gets to the sixth round that would be the bullet, only the arming happens - while the footstep noises of "GodEatGod"'s intro return).

• The Mars Volta's album Frances The Mute begins the first song, "Cygnus... Vismund Cygnus" with the short acoustic piece "Sarcophagi", and ends the thirty-two minute song "Cassandra Gemini" with a reprise of "Sarcophagi", in which the song is much louder and clearer and the vocals are much more defined.
• Brian May's "Driven By You" begins and ends with Brian singing "Everything I do, I do for you" a cappella.
• A more unconventional example: Mayhem's second album Grand Declaration of War is a sequel to their earlier EP Wolf's Lair Abyss. The saga as a whole is divided into three sections: I ("Wolf's Lair Abyss"), II (the first half of "Grand Declaration of War") and III (the second half). A riff appears at the very end of "Symbols of Bloodswords", the last track from "Wolf's Lair Abyss", and the album fades out. "A Grand Declaration of War", the first track of part II of the saga fades in with the same riff shifted up a semitone. The riff appears for the third and final time at the start of the track "View from Nihil (Part II of II)", followed by some spoken word vocals and a sample of a nuclear bomb detonating. This concludes part II of the entire saga.
• MC Chris's first album Life's a Bitch and I'm Her Pimp begins with Chris' answering machine. This same answering machine message is the last thing you hear on his third album Eating's Not Cheating.
• Don McLean:
  • "Castles in the Air" closes with the same stanza with which it opens: "And if she asks you why / You can tell her that I told you..."
  • The first verse of "American Pie" contains the line "And maybe they'd be happy for a while". The last verse contains "And [I] asked her for some happy news", which as at least one site about understanding this song points out, is a sad counterpoint to/echo of the first verse. (The first verse is about the optimism of The '50s until Buddy Holly's death, the last verse is about how the dreams of The '60s have turned sour.)
• Meat Loaf's song "It Just Won't Quit" from Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell begins and ends with the line "And I never really sleep anymore."
• The Megas:
  • Get Equipped (discounting "The Beginning of the End", which is a 17-second instrumental) begins and ends with songs in-character as Mega Man to show his Character Development - "I Want to Be the One" is about his desire to be a hero, "Lamentations of a War Machine" is about his conclusion that War Is Hell and how much he regrets having to kill the Robot Masters.
  • Taking History Repeating as a single large album, the first song is about how Mega Man is tired of being the hero, the last is about how he has inspired Proto Man to choose to become one.
• Melvins released a loose "trilogy" of albums between 1999 and 2000: In chronological order, these were The Maggot, The Bootlicker and The Crybaby. The Crybaby has a Hidden Track which is simply a slowed down, barely audible sample of "amazon", the opening track of The Maggot, followed by a Jumpscare shriek of "Again!". This also references how the other two albums had hidden tracks that worked as teasers for the first song on the next album in the series.
• Maria Mena's "You're the Only One" starts and ends with the same lyric.
• The last number from Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream (Op. 61) is a slightly expanded version of the first theme of the overture (Op. 21) With Lyrics. Both overture and finale begin and end with the same four-chord progression.
• The music video for Midnight Oil's "Beds Are Burning" begins and ends with a shot of a windmill leaning close to the ground.
• The first track on the first album of Ministry's anti George Bush trilogy opens with a sample of Carl Orff's "O Fortuna". The last track on the last album in the trilogy closes with the same sample.
• Double Nickels on the Dime by the Minutemen begins and ends with the sounds of starting cars.
• Miracle Musical:
  • Both the first and last tracks of Hawaii: Part II have the same melody and include the line "alone at the edge of a universe humming a tune".
  • The first and last three lines of "Murders" are nearly identical.
• Anaïs Mitchell: "Young Man in America"'s lyrics begin with the young man's birth, and end with him "climbing in the bed [his mother made him] in".
• Moby's reworking of the James Bond theme begins and end with Pierce Brosnan saying "Bond... James Bond".
• The Momus album Ocky Milk begins with a single, isolated guitar note a few seconds before the first song starts, and ends with the same guitar note a few seconds after the last song ends.
• The Moody Blues:
  • On Days of Future Passed, the first track ("The Day Begins") concludes with the poem "Morning Glory", while the final track ("Nights in White Satin") concludes with the poem "Late Lament". The opening lines of "Morning Glory" and the final lines of "Late Lament" are the same lines regarding the moon ("Cold-hearted orb which rules the night..."), although in "Late Lament", Mike Pinder adds emphasis at the end of the reading to indicate a sense of self-determination. (The album is based on the events of a single day; as one day ends, another begins.) Moreover, "The Day Begins" opens with the sound of a gong being struck, played in reverse; "Nights in White Satin" closes with the same gong strike, now played forwards.
  • On the Threshold of a Dream: the first track ("In the Beginning") starts with a howling-wind sound effect, which also ends the last track ("Have You Heard? Part 2").
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Requiem" begins with the "Requiem aeternam" and "Kyrie" movements, and (at least as completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, before his death) ends with "Lux aeterna" set to the same music with different words. Alois Schmitt's more controversial completion of the unfinished "Great" Mass in C Minor (K. 427) takes a similar approach, basing the concluding "Agnus Dei" movement on the extant "Kyrie."
• Michael Murphey's "Wildfire" begins and ends with the same piano interlude.
• Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition begins with the "Promenade" theme (which recurs throughout the first half of the piece, as it represents Mussorgsky walking from one picture to the next). This theme returns as part of the ending of the last piece, "Great Gate of Kiev".

N

• The first track on Nightwish's 2007 album Dark Passion Play begins with the words "The end" and ends, fourteen minutes later, with the words "the beginning".
• Meta example: Nine Inch Nails ended the last show of their farewell tour with each member leaving the stage one-by-one after they played their last part of the last song ("In This Twilight") ending with Trent Reznor onstage alone playing a keyboard. When they played the first show of their comeback tour several years later, Reznor first came out onto the stage alone playing a keyboard and each member came out one-by-one to play their first part of the first song ("Copy of A").
• The music video for No Doubt's "Don't Speak" opens and closes with Tony Kanal taking a peach from a tree and then putting it back on there.
• The Notorious B.I.G.'s album Ready to Die starts with his birth. The last song "Suicidal Thoughts" ends with his death.

O

• ODESZA's album A Moment Apart begins with the (edited) audio of the cosmonaut scene from Another Earth. Its last track, "Corners of the Earth", fades out to just the tapping from that scene.
• Carl Orff's masterwork Carmina Burana begins and ends with its most well-known segment "O Fortuna".
• Origami Angel:
  • Somewhere City: "The Air Up Here" re-uses a verse from "Welcome to..." In addition, both songs include the line "the city never lets me down."
  • GAMI GANG: The last track, "gg", incorporates parts of the opening instrumental, "#GAMIGANG", towards the end.
  • The same two lines begin and end The Brightest Days:
    Where are you, my sunny feeling I knew as a kid?
    Even on the brightest days, I can't see where you've been

P

• Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's music video for the song "Tsukema Tsukeru" starts and ends with a book.
• Alan Parsons' solo album On Air begins and ends with the track "Blue Blue Sky". The opening piece features fewer lyrics and abruptly ends, where the ending track rises to a crescendo and then fades away.
• The intro and outro of Pearl Jam's Ten album, "Master/Slave": a short, eerie instrumental that fades into opening song "Once", and comes after the final song, "Release".
• Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie" begins and ends with the same eight-measure synth passage.
• The video for Tom Petty's "Into the Great Wide Open" starts with Eddie (Johnny Depp) getting a heart-shaped tattoo before rising and falling from fame as a rock star, and ends with Eddie returning to the same tattoo parlor to find another rock musician (Matt LeBlanc) getting the same tattoo, who'll presumably rise and fall from fame like he did.
• Phantasma's album The Deviant Hearts ends with a snippet of the main melody from the first song of the album.
• No one does it better than Pink Floyd: Their concert film Live at Pompeii begins with Part 1 of Echoes and a long zoom-in shot of the band playing. The film ends with Part 2 and a long zoom-out shot of the band playing.
  • The Dark Side of the Moon begins and ends with a steady, heartbeat-like thumping fading in/out.
  • Wish You Were Here has Part I of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" start the album with a G minor chord fading in. Part IX fades out on a G major chord to end it.
  • Animals opens and closes with parts one and two of "Pigs on the Wing", which are significantly lighter in tone than the other songs, and serve as a framing device of sorts for the main narrative.
  • The Wall begins with pianist Richard Wright saying "—we came in?" and ends with him saying "Isn't this where—", both over the instrumental of "Outside the Wall", the final track on the album.
  • Greatest Hits Album example: Echoes opens and closes with the first and last tracks of the band's debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn ("Astronomy Domine" and "Bike").
• Meta example: The Police's last song live, as played in the 2008 reunion, was the very first song of their debut album, "Next to You".
• "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service both begins and ends with a rhythmic beeping sound.

Q

• Qbomb: The first track, "Buzzkiller", on HYPERPUNK begins with the sound of recording equipment being plugged in. The last track, "Overkiller", concludes with sounds of recording equipment being unplugged and lights shutting off.
• Queen:
  • A Day at the Races starts and ends with the same instrumental bit.
  • "We Will Rock You", as an Age-Progression Song, shows both the "boy" and the "old man" having mud on their faces.
• Queensrÿche's Operation: Mindcrime Concept Album begins and ends with the line "I remember now".

R

• Radiohead's OK Computer starts and ends with the lyrical depiction of a crash; "Airbag", the album opener, is through the eyes of a man celebrating his survival of a crash. "The Tourist", the album's closer, shows a bystander spectating the events leading up to the crash.
• The Red Hot Chili Peppers video for "Otherside" starts and ends with a man lying on the ground.
• R.E.M.:
  • "Blue", the last song on Collapse into Now, eventually turns into a reprise of "Discoverer", the first song on the album.
  • The last song on the concurrent retrospective compilation Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982–2011, which features the last three songs R.E.M. wrote, is "Hallelujah", which makes a prominent reference to "the radio," which not only invokes an arc word common throughout their work but also nods back to their debut single, "Radio Free Europe".
• Rush:
  • Caress of Steel: the final song has multiple parts, the first and last of which are very similar in both the musical style and (respectively) the first and last lines sung.
  • "The Manhattan Project" begins and ends with the same riff on guitar and drums.
  • The official promo clip for "Closer To The Heart" begins and ends on a framed closeup on Geddy Lee's large, round hazel eyes.

S

• Sabaton's album The War to End All Wars begins with "Sarajevo", about the outbreak of World War I, and ends with "Versailles", which is about its end, and is a subeverted Triumphant Reprise of "Sarajevo". "Versailles" begins hopeful that the treaty will bring lasting peace before about 2/3 of the way through, the chorus is replaced with that of "Sarajevo" before finally asking if a war can end all war and if this war will only bring another. Spoiler alert: It did.
• Sentenced's seventh album The Cold White Light opens with the calls of eurasian cranes, and ends with them flocking away in panic.
• Dmitri Shostakovich's "13th Symphony" begins and ends, 65 minutes later, with the exact same bell chime.
• The Simon & Garfunkel album Bookends begins and ends its A-side with the instrumental "Bookends Theme". Inside the themes are the story of a lifetime.
• The CD version of Skinny Puppy's Remission has "Glass Houses" as the second track and "Glass Out" as the second-to-last track. The former also has bookends of its own, beginning and ending with the sample "The beauty of their souls, the sweetness of their characters lives on with us forever" from the film Shadow of a Doubt.
• Sky's third album begins with "The Grace", a 30-second statement of a theme on solo guitar. The final track is "Keep Me Safe and Keep Me Warm, Shelter Me From Darkness", which is a triumphant fanfare built around the same melody.
• The last verse of the song "No exit" by Russian rock-band Splean is similar to the first, but the verbs are in future tense and the line "Someone just has to melt" changes to "If only we both woke up in the same bed".
• Steely Dan's title track to (final track of) The Royal Scam, begins and ends with the line, "And they wandered in from the city of St. John without a dime."
• Sting's album Mercury Falling has its title as the very first and very last words.
• The remix/cover by Lindsey Stirling of music from The Phantom of the Opera begins and ends with artificially aged footage of her entering and leaving the theatre place.
• The coda of "An Alpine Symphony" by Richard Strauss returns to the gloomy B-flat minor "Night" the symphony opens on.
• Barbra Streisand's 1991 box set Just For The Record... (a history of her singing career through more than two decades) begins with her 1955 recording of "You'll Never Know," sung when she was 13. It closes out four discs later with then-current Barbra singing a duet of "You'll Never Know" with 13-year-old Barbra.
• Sufjan Stevens:
  • Illinois! opens with a squeaking piano stool and two short intro tracks. Its first full Epic Rocking, two-part song is "Come On, Feel the Illinoise". It begins with a piano riff and is in Uncommon Time. Its final full Epic Rocking, two-part song is "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders". It begins with a piano riff and is in Uncommon Time. It closes with two short outro tracks and a squeaking piano stool.
  • The Age of Adz: The album begins and ends with acoustic, folky songs, while nearly everything in between is electronic and bombastic.
• Supertramp:
  • Supertramp offers two versions of the song "Surely": a 30-second one verse clip at the beginning, and a more fleshed-out two verse, three-minute version at the end that centers more on their instrumental talent.
  • Crime of the Century starts with a harmonica solo on "School", which is later found in the fade-out of the title track, which ends the album. Many of their concert setlists played off this as well.
• Taylor Swift:
  • Fearless: the song Love Story begins and ends with the line "We were both young when I first saw you..."
  • Speak Now opens with Taylor singing "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah", before the accompaniment to "Mine" begins. It ends with Taylor singing the last line of "Long Live", "We will be remembered", with no accompaniment.
• Switchfoot:
  • The song "Learning to Breathe", begins and ends with the lines, "Hello good morning/ How 'ya do?"
  • The final track on Hello Hurricane ends with a lyrical reprise of the opening song, "Needle and Haystack Life".
  • Their next album, Vice Verses, did the same thing, with the added bonus that this time they made sure the final chord in "Where I Belong" matched the opening chord from "Afterlife", so if you play the album on a loop the ending fades seamlessly back into the beginning.
• System of a Down's double-Concept Album, Mezmerize/Hypnotize, begins with a short introduction called "Soldier Side (intro)", and ends with a song of 3-4 minutes called "Soldier Side."

T

• The first and final tracks of Thank You Scientist's Stranger Heads Prevail, "Prologue... A Faint Applause" and "Epilogue... And The Clever Depart" both feature just vocals and a piano.
• The first track on Christopher Tin's Calling All Dawns, "Baba Yetu", begins with a woman's voice quietly humming a four note phrase. The last track, "Kia Hora Te Marino", ends with that same phrase.
• Isao Tomita's album The Planets begins and ends with an abridged music box version of the "I Vow To Thee, My Country" (aka "Thaxted") section of "Jupiter".
• Devin Townsend's concept album Ziltoid the Omniscient starts with Ziltoid demanding that the Earthlings make him the perfect cup of coffee. The ending reveals that Ziltoid is actually a daydreaming cafe employee who is brought back into reality by a customer demanding that he make him a very specific cup of coffee.
• The first Trans-Siberian Orchestra album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories, begins with "An Angel Came Down", and the story (there are a few non-"story" instrumentals afterwards) ends with "An Angel Returned." The songs have the same tune.
• The first and third verses of Tanya Tucker's "Two Sparrows in a Hurricane" are nearly identical, with only one word ("eighteen" to "eighty-three") changed. The single change in word recontextualizes the end of said verse ("It's just a matter of time / 'Til they spread their wings and fly").
• TWICE:
  • The "Cheer Up" video begins with the Twice members in the kitchen and ends with them back in the kitchen but goofing around in costume.
  • The "TT" video begins with the kids knocking on the door. It ends with the kids being spooked by an unseen entity knocking on the same door.

V

• Suzanne Vega's Solitude Standing is bookended by versions of "Tom's Diner" - one a cappella, one instrumental arranged for keyboard and guitar.
• Vision Divine's album Stream of Consciousness begins and ends with the main character asking what's the meaning of life.
• Funker Vogt's Blutzoll ends with a reprise of "Arising Hero", the first track.

W

• Walk Off The Earth's "Gang Of Rhythm" begins and ends with the main singer playing an acoustic guitar and singing the same lines of lyrics:
  "I've got this old guitar. The strings are rusty, but it's all I need..."
• Ween's The Mollusk starts with "Dancing In The Show Tonight" and ends with "She Wanted To Leave (Reprise)" - the "reprise" alluded to in the title is a short instrumental version of "Dancing In The Show Tonight".
  • "Birthday Boy" starts and ends with lo-fi snippets of Pink Floyd's Echoes - they were taping the song over a Pink Floyd bootleg and decided to Throw It In!.
• "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five", the closing song of Wings' 1973 album Band on the Run, ends with a reprise of the album's opening song - the title track, "Band on the Run".
• The first two and last songs two on Steven Wilson's Hand. Cannot. Erase. are pairs of Siamese Twin Songs.

X

• Xiu Xiu: Angel Guts: Red Classroom begins with the instrumental half-title track "Angel Guts:" and ends with the instrumental half-title track ":Red Classroom".

Y

• Yellowcard:
  • Lights and Sounds begins with the instrumental track "Three Flights Up". The final minute and a half of the final track "Holly Wood Died" is much like the first track, but with different instrumentation. The bonus track version more accurately mirrors this with "Three Flights Down".
• The track "Close to the Edge", from the Yes album of the same name, begins and ends with the sound of bird-calls over wind and running water.
• Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young and Crazy Horse starts with "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" and ends with "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)", a more aggressive, electric-guitar-based rearrangement of the same song.
• Young the Giant's "American Bollywood" begins and ends with the same cello solo.

Unsorted/Other

• "In the Ghetto", written by Mac Davis and later remade by various artists including Elvis Presley, starts and ends with a baby being born in the Chicago ghetto. The song was originally titled "The Vicious Circle", providing further reinforcement of its bookend nature.
• The George Jones and Tammy Wynette song "Golden Ring" opens with a couple looking at a wedding ring in a pawnshop. He buys the ring for her and they get married, but eventually they break up and she throws the ring on the floor as she leaves. In the last verse, another couple is in a pawnshop looking at a ring; presumably the same one from the first verse.
• The hymn I Know That My Redeemer Lives both begins and ends with that phrase.
• Arias in Baroque opera (especially Italian) often used this format (A-B-A) both in music and in text. A tragic aria, for example would go something like this: "Everything is horrible, just let me die!(A) - but maybe there's still hope left (B)- No, everything is horrible, I want to die.(A')".
• Some songs in Ar tonelico video game series began and end the same, most notably the tragic song of Salavec Rhaplanca.
• Songs In The Key Of X, a The X-Files tie-in album, opens with an extended version of Mark Snow's title theme for the series. The last track is a remix of the theme by PM Dawn.
  • The soundtrack to the first film does something similar, if you don't count a Hidden Track: It begins with "Tubular X", a piece by Mike Oldfield combining elements of the show's theme and the most famous section of Tubular Bells, and ends with The Dust Brothers' remix of the theme.
• The Songs of Paddington begins and ends with the song "P-A-D-D-I-N-G-T-O-N".

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And the song will begin again...