10 Rock Songs That Left Us All Hanging
3. I Want You (She's So Heavy) - The Beatles
When you look back on history, The Beatles probably broke up at just the right time for their legacy to be intact. It was becoming abundantly clear that everyone was drifting apart creatively, and they would spend the rest of their years still making quality music apart from the rest of the Fabs. They never stopped exploring when they were together, even if it meant leaving the listener in total shock.
As if Revolution 9 off of the White Album wasn’t a big enough clue, John Lennon was immersing himself in the avant garde and used I Want You (She’s So Heavy) as a way to play with minimalism, using only a few words throughout the song to prove his point. While the first half of the song is a nice piece of bluesy rock and roll, the outro is a sound to behold, with a swirling noise machine and a chord sequence and riff that seems to predict the world of doom metal decades before it had become a thing. As John was listening back to the master tape though, he wanted something a little bit more final and told the engineer to cut the tape off a few seconds before the song actually ended.
Right when you’re waiting for the song to hit the final chord, all we’re left with is nothing, never fully resolving and feeling like the band accidentally got shut off. Although streaming has made it so much better, this closing off the first side of Abbey Road works so much better on vinyl. In the time it takes to flip the side over, you’re left confused and shaken by that hard cut and then basking in the dayglow with George Harrison on Here Comes the Sun.