A properly sequenced album should feel like a movie; the beginning grabs your attention, the action rises, and the finale explodes. Many album closers commit to this arc ("A Day in the Life" from Sgt. Pepper's is an excellent example) but some albums leave us hanging at the end, even the great ones. Here are seven classic albums with anti-climactic endings.
1. Big Star - #1 Record (1972)
The second half of Big Star's debut album #1 Record more or less drops the power-pop punch of the first half and shifts to mellow acoustic strumming. After going through "Give Me Another Chance", "Try Again", and "Watch the Sunrise," the album begs to be finished off with another heavy rocker. Instead we get the minute-long "ST 100/6" which is a gorgeous track in its own right, but would have been better placed at the end of side one.
2. Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand (1994)
Every Guided By Voices album is filled with blindingly brief songs, and they chose to close out their breakthrough LP Bee Thousand with the album's shortest track: the 33-second "You're Not an Airplane". Though the piano-based track sounds like a classic comedown, its extremely short running time diffuses any closure it could have possibly provided.
3. The Smiths - The Queen is Dead (1986)
If you listened to the 10 songs from The Queen is Dead out of sequence, the obvious closer would be the majestic "There is a Light That Never Goes Out". However, Morrissey and Marr chose to place that song at track 9, leaving "Some Girls are Bigger Than Others" as the album closer. At first this song seems like an afterthought when compared to "There is a Light," but it eventually reveals itself to be an effective denouement, rather than a leftover.
4. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica (2000)
The Moon & Antarctica is Modest Mouse's most dramatic and purposefully structured album, which makes the choice of "What People Are Made Of" as the last track quite bizarre. It's neither a comedown nor an epic finale; it's simply a brief post-punk track that would have worked better in the middle of the album. For what it's worth, I would have chosen "Gravity Rides Everything" as the closer, but that song is placed all the way at track two.
5. Michael Jackson - Thriller (1982)
After delivering 37 minutes of pure dance-pop bliss (and that Paul McCartney duet), Michael Jackson could have closed out Thriller with another stone-cold classic, or a magnificent ballad, but instead he gives us "The Lady in My Life," which is pretty much nothing. It's not dancey, it's not catchy, and it's not magnificent. Jackson would have been better off ending the album after "P.Y.T."
6. Neil Young - After the Gold Rush (1970)
Take a look at tracks 9, 10, and 11 on After the Gold Rush. We have a great guitar jam, which is followed by a beautifully downbeat country song, and then rounded out with a minute and a half long folk pop number. "Cripple Creek Ferry" is a great, catchy song, but it should have been placed much earlier in the album.
7. The Beatles - Abbey Road (1969)
The song suite on side 2 of Abbey Road is one of the most grandiose finales in rock history. Not only does it close out the album, it closes out the story of the Beatles entirely (the album was recorded after Let It Be, but released before). However, following 18 seconds of silence at the end of the suite comes "Her Majesty," a 26-second folk song that was intended to be included within the suite, but eventually discarded. Despite the band's intentions, the track was accidentally left at the end of the tape, closing out the Beatles' final album awkwardly and hilariously.
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