No Endings in Music.
- Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly ends on a pointedly jarring note. Wrapping up the album and its themes of racial inequality and black culture, "Mortal Man" ends in a spoken-word passage revealing that the poem that Kendrick had been reciting throughout the album was being delivered to Tupac Shakur, seemingly from beyond his early grave. From there, the two exchange words with one anothernote on the state of society, with Kendrick reciting a second poem about the Caterpillar and the Butterfly (symbolizing the downtrodden of the hood and the successful icons that inspire them), and how they are both completely different yet one in the same. Kendrick asks for Pac's thoughts... and then the album ends without a response.
- The Boards of Canada album Geogaddi is a dark, twisting, vaguely conceptual nightmare filled with backmasking, references to cults, and eerie songs with evocative names. It reaches its climax with the haunting "You Could Feel the Sky," then suddenly cuts to the peaceful, droning "Corsair," which closes the album. The result is that the album doesn't feel so much like a complete story told through music, but rather a fever dream with scattered chronology and no definite resolution other than "Corsair" being the moment that the fever dream ends. It's done so well that fans wouldn't want it any other way.
- Likewise, Radiohead's Hail to the Thief. Based on comments from Thom Yorke, most of the album signifies a nightmare, and "A Wolf at the Door" is the horror of waking up only to find that while you slept, the world has become just as bad as the nightmare. It's all very metaphorical and political.
- Tends to happen quite a bit in Rock Opera;
- The grand finale of The Who's Tommy features Tommy's followers rejecting him, followed by a soliloquy on Tommy's part. Listeners and reviewers at the time were divided on what it was supposed to mean, with some opining that Tommy's followers kill him and others believing he reverts back to his self-imposed deaf-blindness. The Movie and the Broadway musical clarify it somewhat, but take two completely different takes on it.
- The Who's Quadrophenia ends with the singer trapped on a rock in the middle of the ocean. He yields himself to love and reconciles his inner nature, or something, but he's still trapped on a rock in the ocean. Then it ends.
- Our House by Madness from The Rise & Fall, The Madness musical has two possible paths of the protagonist's life leading to two possible endings right from the start, with no indication of which one actually happened. However, after those are both sort-of resolved, halfway through the reprise of the title song, we're treated to a third possibility which, if it was real, would mean that neither of those endings could have happened, and absolutely nothing is resolved, or indeed, actually happened at all.
- Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds has two endings; the first, lifted from the book, in which the Journalist wonders to himself whether Earth is truly safe or whether even now the Martians are preparing a second assault; and a second, invented by Wayne, where a NASA-sponsored mission to Mars in the 1970s appears to be interrupted by a new Martian attack.
- Rush's 2112 ends with an unidentified, ominous mechanical-sounding voice proclaiming "ATTENTION ALL PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION - WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL." Whether this is meant to symbolize the triumphant return of the Elder Race as imagined by the protagonist, or the priesthood's spiritual domination of him, is left up to the listener's imagination.
- Likewise, Pink Floyd's The Wall ends with the wall coming down, but whether Pink's being "exposed before [his] peers" will be for good or ill is much less certain. In order to get a more conclusive ending, you need to listen to the song "The Final Cut," which describes Pink having trouble reintegrating with society, unsuccessfully trying to shoot himself, and then his wife reaching out to him during another suicide attempt. It's a bittersweet ending, as the world blows up two songs later...
- Bal-Sagoth tell a lot of original stories in their songs. Many of them end in a To Be Continued.
- In a melodic, rather than plot-based, example, a few of P.D.Q. Bach's pieces end just short of the note you know they have to resolve to, such as the Adagio Saccharino from the Schleptet in E Flat Major (5:40-6:25
), or the theme from the Tema con Variazione in the Concerto for Horn and Hardart (8:17-9:30).- One of the funnier examples is the "Prelude to Einstein on the Fritz," which, if you listen closely, is a adaptation of the Prelude in C Major from Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier, which stops short just before reaching the final chord of J.S. Bach's original piece.
- "Untitled" by D'Angelo ends like this in the album version, where the song is cut off mid-sentence.
- The Beatles did this with both sides of the Abbey Road album.
- "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" has a lengthy musical outro which abruptly cuts to dead silence in the middle of a riff.
- "Her Majesty", the last track on the second side, cuts out the last note. The reason for this is that "Her Majesty" was originally supposed to be a part of the medley, between "Mean Mr. Mustard" and "Polythene Pam". Listen to it in that order and it makes perfect sense musically. note
- "Pull Me Under" by Dream Theater cuts out the last note. The band was apparently on a big Beatles spree around the time it was recorded, and this is possibly inspired by "Her Majesty".
- Prog-rock band Genesis did this at least twice:
- "Harold the Barrel" ends with the titular anti-hero stuck on a window ledge above a town square full of people, preparing to jump, and we're not given any clue how the scene is resolved. Except for the way the final "running jump" fades as if the singer is falling away from the listener.
- "One for the Vine" is effectively a Möbius-loop song with a never-ending plot; a people who live in mountainous terrain, beset with enemies, have found a saviour-figure to lead them in battle. One of those who don't believe in this hero escapes up the mountain, only to slip and fall onto a plain like the one he calls home, complete with a tribe just like his... who, because of his "miraculous" appearance, hail him as their saviour. At first elated at having landed on his feet (figuratively and literally), he becomes horrified when he realises that he's back in the situation from which he was trying to escape — this time right in the middle. The song (but not the story) ends with him seeing one of his disciples who's lost faith in him flee up a mountain...
- The concept double-album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway: since it's based on Peter Gabriel's own dreams, it goes without saying that the narrative is odd, to say the least. Basically, a New York street punk named Rael winds up in some bizarre, alternate underground New York City. After going through many increasingly bizarre locales and situations, he finally sees a way back to the real New York. But he's forced to choose between escape and saving his drowning brother John, who in all previous appearances had refused to save him. Rael dives into the water, rescues his brother, pulls him onto dry land, and then, according to the lyrics, "Something's changed, that's not your face! It's mine, it's mine!" And, um, that's it.
- The Neil Young classic "Cortez The Killer" becomes a lengthy jam session that fades out abruptly as the band still plays, due to a power outage that led to the rest of the song, as well as a final verse (much of which is still unknown), being lost. When informed of the power failure, Young said, "I never liked that verse anyway", and used the incomplete take.
- In David Bowie's "Space Oddity" from Space Oddity, last thing we know is they lose communication, no clue is left as to what happens after that. "Ashes to Ashes" later reveals that he may have survived.
- Peter Schilling's take on the same story in "Major Tom" assumes that he did survive after losing contact, although it's not clear what happens next.
- Utada Hikaru has the song "Take 5", where the very abrupt ending is supposed to symbolise either death or Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
- Type O Negative does this with the majority of their own songs, each of them ending with an abrupt digital cutoff. This is most apparent on the album closers, which stop right in the middle of a climactic buildup. One of them, the final track on World Coming Down, just so happens to be a cover—guess who and what it's a cover of.note
- Many, many music videos end this way.
- "The Goin' Gets Tough from the Getgo" by Ween. As Dean Ween explains at the end of one performance (lyrics NSFW), "It doesn't have a real ending, it just like... dribbles to a halt."
- Dinosaur Jr.'s cover of The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" stops dead just before the second chorus.
- Blue Öyster Cult's "Flaming Telepaths" on Secret Treaties ends mid-sentence of the repeated phrase "and the joke's on you".
- Franz Schubert's infamous "Unfinished Symphony" No. 8 is probably the Trope Maker in the genre.
- Mozart's famous Requiem was this trope, until his student Franz Süssmayr completed it after Mozart's death.
- Death Cab for Cutie's "Pity and Fear" builds up into a huge, climactic, distorted repeating riff, and then cuts out halfway into a riff. Apparently, whatever they were using to record the song broke in the middle of the recording, and they just ended up keeping it because it sounded better.
- In Johann Sebastian Bach's Art of Fugue, the largest and presumably last fugue in the cycle abruptly cuts off mid-passage, as a result of the piece being unfinished before he died.
- Alexander Scriabin's late works often seem to vanish into thin air rather than reaching a conventional ending. This is particularly noticeable in his Piano Sonata No. 5 (and in most of the rest of the piano sonatas after it).
- This is also a common feature of Franz Liszt's experimental works from near the end of his life, such as Nuages gris and the various La lugubre gondola pieces.
- The second movement of Charles Ives' Fourth Symphony ends in a bombastic circus march section, which cuts off in mid-phrase, leaving only a viola line, which trails off after a measure. In his posthumous piano piece The Celestial Railroad, which is essentially the same symphony movement in a condensed form with fewer sections, the ending is even more abrupt.
- Although the endings occur more naturally than the above, his Concord Sonata is notable for its various non-resolutions: the second movement ("Hawthorne") has a shocking burst of dissonant notes, while the first ("Emerson") and last ("Thoreau") seem to fade into infinity at the lowest dynamics possible. By contrast the third movement, "The Alcotts", ends on a more conventional C major.
- Cunninlynguists' "Falling Down" begins with one singer describing his situation, then going through a mental breakdown and shooting a man. As he heads to the pawn shop to buy more ammunition and "take care of some business," another singer takes over, who due to different circumstances also goes through a breakdown and also winds up headed to the pawn shop with blood on his hands. The third singer's rampage, and the song, end with a declaration that two guys who happen to be walking to the pawn shop are "about to get it too." One can only assume that this will not end well.
- "Itsy-Bitsy Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini".
- Smokie's song Living Next Door To Alice. In the final verse the narrator's other friend Sally tells him that she has been waiting 24 years for him to take an interest in her. His reply is not recorded, as we are just told that the big limousine disappeared.
- Elvis Costello's "Night Rally", which cuts off a noisy buildup and a repeating of the title. Some versions of This Year's Model pull a Mood Whiplash by putting Costello's upbeat single "Radio Radio" immediately afterwards.
- The last line of La Dispute's "King Park"
- I left the hotel behind, don't want to know how it ends.
- Frank Zappa's album / play Thing-Fish is about mutated black stereotypes performing an offensive play, then capturing the last two audience members, who are chained up and made to witness audacious and outright bizarre events. The whole thing ends with everyone randomly having anal sex while dwarves spill out of the stage.
- Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" from Machine Head could easily be mistaken for having this kind of ending, as many radio stations only play it up to the second verse, which leaves the story hanging. The full song finishes the story and depicts whether or not they actually win the "race" that night.
- The Split Enz song "I See Red" cuts out abruptly (a la "She's So Heavy") as the music crescendoes and the title is continuously shouted. It is unknown whether this was intentional or accidental, but the video for the song ends with the band suddenly vanishing to the cut, leaving their instruments behind on the empty set.
- The Vocaloid song series Karakuri Burst has a really confusing one. The song ends when Rin and Len remember their past, and they both stare at each other... and then it ends. But wait! There's more! The producer released two other songs... which give no elaboration to anyone else, and only address what happened to them. And the last song just ends with Rin telling Len 'good night until you wake up from this bad dream'. What does it mean? Who are the other characters? Why do Lily and Gumi appear on the cover of the album? Will Rin and Len ever get closure? It won't ever be addressed.
- Emilie Autumn has "Opheliac", the title track of her most popular album. The song ends right before she can finish the chorus, probably to symbolize the unpredictable nature of the narrator (the eponymous Opheliac):It's not the way I wanna be
I only hope that in the end you will see― - "Nothing Really Ends" from Pocket Revolution by dEUS is about a relationship where the lovers wonder whether they should end it or start over again. The song ends with an open ending, where the music dissolves into a mysterious Last Note Nightmare:I once told a friend that nothing really ends, no-one can prove this
So I'm asking you now: "Could it possibly be that you still love me?"
Do you feel the same
Do I have a chance of doing that old dance again
Is it too late for some of that romance again
Let's go away, we'll neer have the chance again
I'd take it all from you. - Shiina Ringo's "Souretsu", the last song on Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana, gradually gets louder and then suddenly cuts off. The ending of Shouso Strip does almost the exact opposite: it starts to fade out, but suddenly cuts off before it fades completely. Incidentally, both of these end their respective albums at very precise lengths: KSK at 44:44.4, and Shouso Strip at 55:55.
- Todd Rundgren's "La Feel Internacìonále" just cuts off suddenly with no ending.
- Daniel Amos' "Endless Summer" (from ¡Alarma!) says outright in the chorus that the protagonists won't ever find what they seek:We were looking for an endless summer
We're still looking for an endless summer
It's no surprise we'll be looking endlessly - Opeth did this twice, as "Serenity Painted Death" and "Closure" both cut off abruptly. In the former it is intentional to indicate the capture of the protagonist, while in the latter it is an ironic pun on the title of the song (as the abrupt ending means the song has no closure).
- Enslaved provide another example of this with their song "Bounded by Allegiance" from the Isa album. Like several of the other examples above, it stops abruptly.
- "Ascension Day" by Talk Talk cuts off abruptly at the six minute mark, during a chaotic improv section.
- Alban Berg's Lyric Suite for strings ends with a deliberate lack of motivic resolution. The concluding "Largo desolato" movement instead fades out anticlimactically on a slow viola tremolo, and Berg insists that the lower note of this tremolo must not be played last.
- Miracle of Sound's "Trip to Vegas" (a song about Fallout: New Vegas) abruptly ends when the game crashes (as it often does).
- "Me" by Mabel Pines cuts off abruptly at 1:57 with the line "I'm just a puff of smoke and soon I will be gone".
- Warren Zevon's song "Life'll Kill Ya" doesn't end so much as abruptly stop.
- In Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral, regarding individual songs, both "Ruiner" and "Big Man with a Gun" end abruptly on a hard, digital stop. In particular, "Ruiner" ends in mid-sentence, with the Madness Mantra of "You didn't hurt me, nothing can stop me now" suddenly cut off on the word "stop". The Concept Album itself uses this for Mood Whiplash, with the increasingly loud, intense and aggressive "Big Man with a Gun" abruptly cut off by "A Warm Place", a quiet and somber instrumental.
- Similarly, "The Perfect Drug" from the Lost Highway soundtrack: The coda consists of the repeated lyric "without you, everything falls apart / without you, it's not as much fun to pick up the pieces", but on the final repetition, the last syllable of "pieces" gets abruptly cut off.
- They Might Be Giants: "The Lady and the Tiger" from their album Join Us is a Perspective Flip on the Frank Stockton story "The Lady, or the Tiger?", where the Lady and the Tiger are waiting restlessly for a resolution that will never come. It ends with them still in that same situation; even the music ends on a rather abrupt note after the last verse.The hall remains, it still contains
A pair of doors, a choice
Behind one door, a muffled roar
Behind the other, a voice - In the children's song "There's a Hole in My Bucket" (also sometimes written as "...in the Bucket"), the protagonist, Henry, is asked to fetch a pail of water by his wife, Liza. He complains that he can't due to his bucket having a hole in it. When Liza suggest the different steps to fix it, he points out after each one a problem preventing him from doing that step, causing Liza to grow more exasperated each time. It starts with him needing a cut-off piece of wood to plug the hole in the bucket, then pointing out his axe is too dull to cut the wood, the sharpening stone is too dry and needs water to work, and he can't get water to wet the stone due to the hole in the bucket that he is trying to fix. We then realize they are right both back where they started. In the end we never find out if Henry or Liza is ever able to find a way to fix the bucket or fetch the water by some other means.
- The music on the last track of the album News at 11 by 猫 シ Corp. just abruptly stops, with no fade out. You do continue to hear a few more seconds of static, then nothing else. It's jarring considering the album's subject matter.
- The lyrics All Along The Watchtower by Bob Dylan end with not just a lack of resolution, but a promise of impending action that is never delivered:Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
