10 Greatest Album Closers Of All Time
1. A Day In The Life - The Beatles (Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Q9D4dcYngRetiring from playing gigs due to exhaustion (the Beatles had been on the touring circuit tirelessly since their Hamburg days) and the limitations that live performances imposed on their increasingly innovative musicianship, Paul McCartney further suggested that the band get away from themselves by adopting a fictional moniker, giving birth to the concept of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Indeed, this gave the Liverpudlian group a chance to re-invent themselves as people and, of course, journey deeper into the mind-expanding world of a burgeoning LSD culture.
I may have previously alluded to Sgt. Peppers shortcomings as a concept album, undermining my original argument that a fitting closing song is the culmination of an albums consistent sequencing, but The Beatles most famous release has more than enough quality to overshadow this criticism. Described on its inception by one overzealous critic as the defining moment of Western civilisation, the album is a wondrous collage of acid-enthused lyricism, vaudeville stylings and revolutionary studio production. As if the coded references to drug consumption on Fixing A Hole and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds were not enough, the band were also on such a creative high that they used their time in the studio to craft hazy and colourful musical landscapes that sounded like nothing that had ever come before. On Sgt. Pepper, The Beatles created a sound so ethereal and mystifying that it drove their main artistic rival and head Beach Boy, Brian Wilson, into a state of madness after it usurped his masterwork, 1966s Pet Sounds, as the most sonically revolutionary album ever released.
Drowning in fantasy and make-believe, The Beatles 67 opus depicts four minds awhirl with euphoria-inspiring substances, but its legendary final number, A Day In The Life, possesses a much more sombre vibe. With Lennon occupying the piano, he spins a tale of a man who blew his mind out in a car transforming Peppers dreamy atmosphere into a nightmare, snapping listeners out of their merry stupor and pulling them back into the realm of the real. Marking the beginning of Lennons preoccupation with social and political issues, evinced in the snarling line a crowd of people turned away but I just had to look, A Day In The Life was later banned by purveyors of light-entertainment drivel, the BBC, for featuring the loaded phrase Id love to turn you on..., which resolutely destroyed the bands wholesome, cheeky chappy image and awarded them the status of counter-culture heroes.
A song made more surreal and unnerving by a McCartney bridge that bears no real relation to Lennons main lyric, A Day In The Life is also noteworthy for an ambitious usage of orchestral music that gifts it a dramatic and operatic dynamic, as well as containing one of the most famous final chords in the history of popular music. A gorgeous sustained piano chord that halts a maddening orchestra in its tracks, its hard not to be overwhelmed and made teary-eyed by the songs sumptuous conclusion. A snapshot of a band at their zenith and the fullest realisation of the Beatles brooding innovation, A Day In The Life is the Fab Four at their finest hour and the most distinctive, most significant album closer ever written.