Best Closing Tracks, Pt. 2

#40: “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide”
David Bowie
The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972)

Ziggy Stardust unfolds like a crazy, melodramatic theater piece and “Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide” is the huge, show-stopping final number. Mark Ronson’s guitar crunches and trumpets blare in the background, while Bowie screams himself hoarse, crying “You’re wonderful!” All that’s missing is a big, full-ensemble dance number.

#39: “Rocket Queen”
Guns N’ Roses
Appetite For Destruction (1987)

Axl Rose is 99% idiot, 1% genius. Somehow, that combination proved to be exactly what GnR needed from their frontman, lifting them above all their hair metal peers into a whole other level of drunk, reckless insanity. Nowhere is this more evident than on “Rocket Queen”, which closes the band’s only good album. While the song maintains a strong, rhythmic groove over the course of six minutes, the real bumpin’ and grindin’ was going on in the studio. In an attempt to prove how ridiculous he was, Axl recorded an audio track of him and the drummer’s girlfriend having sex in the studio and included it on the track. There’s really no other way a Guns N’ Roses album could end.

#38: “The Other Side Of Mt. Heart Attack”
Liars
Drum’s Not Dead (2006)

Liars have certainly devolped a reputation as being an abrasive band, but this track shows a different side to the New Yorkers’ music. With a gentle, plucked guitar riff guiding the way, “The Other Side Of Mt. Heart Attack” is a beautiful, drifting avant-garde ballad, full of distant voices and wispy musical details floating in the wind.

#37: “Jack The Ripper”
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Henry’s Dream (1992)

“Jack The Ripper” is, at its core, a traditional-sounding blues song about domestic troubles. However, in the hands of Nick Cave and his merry band of Australian hoodlums, it evolves into a shitstorm of blades and blood and anger and groans. Never have acoustic guitars sounded this vicious, raw and brutal.

#36: “Tomorrow Never Knows”
The Beatles
Revolver (1966)

Another Beatles selection and, again, it’s quite a cliché one. Yet, there’s a reason multiple generations of people have emphasized these songs. Not unlike “A Day In The Life”, “Tomorrow Never Knows” is a track way too far ahead of its time, with the backward samples, unidentifiable sound effects and Lennon’s immortally abstract cry of “turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.”

#35: “Ocean Rain”
Echo & The Bunnymen
Ocean Rain (1984)

This is a quintessential closing track, providing a hushed, emotional coda to an album full of variety. Some simple acoustic guitars do the heavy lifting, with some surprisingly tasteful strings lurking in the wings to add color every now and then. On top of it all comes Ian McCulloch’s vocal line, which captures all the majesty and grandeur the band spent their entire career trying to find.

#34: “Torn Curtain”
Television
Marquee Moon (1977)

This track would be almost hilariously maudlin if Television hadn’t earned this kind of portentious schlock with everything else on their landmark Marquee Moon album. As such, “Torn Curtain” becomes a wallowing dirge, featuring lots of squealing guitars and Tom Verlaine’s endlessly uninterpretable lyrics. The fact that the whole thing can’t even find a way to end, instead opting to just drift off into silence, makes the end result all the more haunting.

#33: “This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody)”
Talking Heads
Speaking In Tongues (1983)

David Byrne has never been one for expounding the virtues of love and romance, but he closed Speaking In Tongues, the Heads’ first truly disappointing album, with one of the brightest lights in the Heads’ entire oeuvre. And guess what! It’s a love song. For probably the first time in his life, Byrne quashed his sarcastic, cynical inclinations, allowing this gorgeous ode to dedication, comfort and love to come flowing out. Of course, he then proceeded to sing it to a floor lamp. Some things never change.

#32: “Third World Man”
Steely Dan
Gaucho (1980)

Steely Dan once again prove that there’s more to them than schlocky dance rock by recording this eerie song about a war vet suffering through PTSD and digging foxholes in his lawn. Guided by a beautiful, instantly memorable melody, the song allows as much space as possible to enter the arrangement without everything falling apart, climaxing at the bridge, where the guitars drop into silence only to be dragged back by a crackling drum fill. In all, it’s an intense song about a guy just trying to “keep the sidewalks safe for the little guy.”

#31: “Answering Machine”
The Replacements
Let It Be (1984)

Rare is the rock song that can survive on just an electric guitar. Yet, Paul Westerberg accomplishes just that on “Answering Machine”, which eschews the Replacement’s thunderous rhythm section for a single, roaring guitar. Over this tumultuous backdrop, Westerberg howls about romantic abandonment and loneliness, screaming “how do you say goodnight to an answering machine?” into the void.