End of the Career Show

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Great 'final' singles - artists and groups self-consciously bowing out, bringing the curtain down on a career. The marketing-savvy world of modern pop allows plenty of opportunities to do this but sadly few take them.

Of course for the purposes of this thread I also want examples of singles that SHOULD have been the final one, not because what followed was particularly awful but because they would have been a supremely fitting farewell. In fact all three of the songs I'm going to use to start us off weren't ACTUALLY the last release by the act.

Madness - "Yesterday's Men" ("...hang on to today, to sing any old way")
Take That - "Never Forget" ("someday soon this will be someone elses dream") - this is the ULTIMATE example really!
Morrissey - "Boxers" ("losing in front of your home crowd")

Any more??

Comments

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

EDGE OF HEAVEN!

i had to look up "beat surrender" so does it really count, clearly good, and quite fitting...

goodbye by the spice girls?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes Goodbye of course!!

"Beat Surrender" yes!

"Edge Of Heaven" is awesome but doesn't have a particular 'ending' feel, well I don't think so anyway. However in the interests of making this particular C90 let's be having it.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

oasis - live forever. I CAN DREAM

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Manic Street Preachers - Suicide Is Painless
Pet Shop Boys - Being Boring

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Thoughts on this front also prompted by Popular and my realisation that the Beatles recorded about fifty "THIS IS IT GIRLS, HANKIES OUT" songs. Well three or four anyway. ALL OF WHICH are rub.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Surely the Pet Shop Boys answer is "Go West", especially with the "I believe in Ecstasy..." coda on the album. *choke!*

SHOULDA BEENS

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Spice Girls - "Viva Forever" (feels to me much more of a goodbye song to their fans than "Goodbye": "hasta mañana, always be mine/ I'll be waiting/ everlasting, like the sun/ Live Forever..." and of course "Goodbye" was rub.)

Also, you made a good case here once for PSBs finishing after "Go West"

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

New Order - Regret.

Obviously.

Re: SHOULDA BEENS

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

gah, xposts x lots

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes! Good one!

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

the doors - the end

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

joy division - new dawn fades sound appropriate. but ceremony works both ways.

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

A lot of fond farewells here, and fewer 'fuck you's. To that end:

Destinys Child - Survivor
Eminem - The Way I Am (possibly with Em being shot dead in video)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

nah, Decades was the perfect sign off

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

how about michael jackson - leave me alone as a FU

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

Saint Etienne - He's On The Phone, mostly because of the "it's time to go" bit.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

GPWM! (i am no good at this, it seems)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

Manics should be faster, i'd say...

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Boo hiss. Much good Et stuff after that, which isn't really even that great of a song.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes but the point of the thing isn't "after which they did no more good stuff" but "would have been the ideal curtain-faller if they had retired"

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

That is an excellent choice.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

I agree entirely, but "the first note they ever played" seemed a little harsh.

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

Speaking of teh Smiths as we were several posts ago - Paint A Vulgar Picture?

[cis.livejournal.com]

I'd go for "this is yesterday", I think, it has that goodbye-goodbye elegiac feel and is pretty epic, where the huger-sounding Everything Must Go singles were all a bit too, um, peppy for that end-of-the-line feel of a Final Single.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

faster as first (pre?) HB single though, screaming into the void etcetcetc I WAS A TEENAGE GOTH, WHAT OF IT????

all you people can't you see can't you see

[cis.livejournal.com]

I've always thought of boyband-sings-to-fans singles as having a valedictory feel, though they don't always have the right grandiosity:
Backstreet Boys' "larger than life",
5ive's "Don't wanna let you go",
er i thought nsync did one but maybe that was just the video.

Re: all you people can't you see can't you see

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

5ive's Closer To You maybe?

holdingyoubutionlymissthesethingswhentheyleave*coff*

[cis.livejournal.com]

I think it was pre? I don't know, I'm so focused on it as a statement of intent, 'this is what to expect from HB', that I can't imagine it as a farewell. Also nowhere near sentimental enough!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

jackson = "i am the damned/i am the dead/i am the agony inside a dying head"

Re: all you people can't you see can't you see

[cis.livejournal.com]

Mm, that's the right sort of pace and general air, isn't it?

nsync have never done a valedictory song it appears. :(

Re: all you people can't you see can't you see

[awesomewells.livejournal.com]

EAST 17 - STAY ANOTHER DAY

Surely this is the perfect one?

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Didn't S Club 7 do one of these?

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Yes -- 'Say Goodbye'

Re: holdingyoubutionlymissthesethingswhentheyleave*coff*

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

THAT'S WHY IT WORKS ;)

[juror8.livejournal.com]

REM- Nightswimming

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I can't believe no one has mentioned Will Young's masterpiece, Leave Right Now.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Yes right but - canon aside - "He's on the Phone' is Not a Very Good Song.