Five Emotion-Driven Album Endings Everyone Needs To Hear
The way an artist chooses to tie up a body of work they’ve spent hundreds of hours creating can be incredibly special, to say the least. This final track on an album has the potential to bring a project up from being categorized as good, to great.
From chart topper SZA, to rising singer-songwriter Jensen McRae, here are our picks of album endings everyone needs to hear at least once -- preferable in a moving vehicle with the windows down.
“Management” - Clairo
Guided by a beautiful soundscape of staccato strings and piano riffs, Clairo ends her sophomore album Sling with a track that spotlights thoughts of wishing you were able to handle the struggles of life a bit differently. In a sense, it is a letter to the self - a warning maybe - that if you don’t work to change, resentment will follow.
“20 Something” - SZA
SZA’s CTRL is a 14 track album that explores everything from loving to not having enough love for yourself. With deeply honest lyrics and emotion-driven vocals, she continues this conversation of navigating growth and failure in early adulthood with “20 Something” - an anthem of relatability for twenty-somethings everywhere.
“gredel” - JOBIE
“gredel” is a song of reflection, comparing childhood to present day and trying to pinpoint where things went wrong. The singer-songwriter’s folk-influenced vocals pair seamlessly together with her vulnerable lyrics as she sings “I’m overcorrecting, now that I’m older / I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders”.
“I Know The End” - Phoebe Bridgers
With lyrics that coincide with her descriptive, story-telling writing style, Phoebe Bridgers concludes her second studio album quite literally with “I Know The End”. It’s a dark and imaginative 6-minute telling of the ending of the world, beginning as an indie ballad with a build up that’s hard to shake off even just after the first listen.
“Make You Proud” - Jensen McRae
After considerately looking back on her own formative, adolescent experiences and paired life lessons in Are you Happy Now?, Jensen McRae’s “Make You Proud” looks to the future. Deeply rooted in love, the song is special in all aspects but especially in McRae’s emotional and raspy delivery of the poetic words she brings to life. It acts as a reminder that things will get better “if you stick around”.