We celebrate the end of this 2022 and wish you a truly rock ‘n’ roll new year, with a selection of songs on the end… of the year. But that’s not all! Let’s talk about the end, not only temporal, but also about the world!
Songs about the end… of the year: Linkin Park, The Cure, Cohen…
In the end
Let’s start with Linkin Park’s In the end. Of this song we remember the music video. The music video for “In the End” was shot at various stages of the 2001 Ozzfest tour and was directed by Nathan Cox and the band’s DJ Joe Hahn, who would go on to direct many of Linkin Park’s future videos. Although the background of the video was shot in a California desert, the band itself performed on a studio stage in Los Angeles, with important special effects used to create the final version. Performing on a studio stage allowed Hahn and Cox to raise the water pipes above the stage towards the end and drench the band. But in the end, as the band says “in the end, it doesn’t even matter”.
The end of the World
We continue with The end of the world by The Cure, who in recent weeks have performed in Italy. Also in this case we talk about the music video, directed by Floria Sigismondi and shows the frontman Robert Smith in a house that begins to destroy itself. As he leaves the house, it turns into debris and the rest of the band finds various things from the debris. The video ends with the reconstruction of the house, Smith returning inside and plants growing on the floor. It is evident that this video celebrates rebirth, new beginnings after destruction. For the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 this seems like a great wish, to start again from what is destroyed.
Dance me to the end of love
Dance Me to the End of Love”, Leonard Cohen’s masterpiece, might sound like a song about the end of a love, but it is not, or it is in part. Cohen actually claimed that the song was inspired by the Holocaust in a 1995 radio interview:
“It’s curious how songs start because the origin of the song, each song, has a kind of germ or seed that someone gives you or the world gives you and that’s why the process is so mysterious in writing a song. But this came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the extermination camps, next to the crematoria, in some extermination camps, a string quartet was being performed while this horror was taking place… And they would play classical music while their fellow prisoners were killed and burned. So, that music, “Dance to your beauty with a burning violin,”
meaning that its beauty is the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But it is the same language we use to surrender to love. We do not think there is any need to say more.
The Beginning is the End is the Beginning
We dedicated an entire article to this song by the Smashing Pumpkins some time ago. It is the band’s first song released as a single following their 1995 album, Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness. It was also their first outing with drummer Matt Walker, who later played several tracks on “Adore ” and James Iha’s Let It Come Down . The song reached the top 10 in eight countries and won the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. On February 23, 2009, Tyler Bates used the song for the trailer for Watchmen. The film is an adaptation of Alan Moore’s comic book by director Zack Snider.
Songs about the end… of the year: part II
The end
For this Beatles song we leave you with a curiosity. The phrase “In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make” is essentially the Beatles’ closing statement. It is the last lyrics of the last album they recorded. Let It Be was the last album they released, but it was actually recorded before.
Neverending story
The lyrics to the song “Never Ending Story” were written by Keith Forsey in 1984. His, and those years, were the soundtracks of Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop and Breakfast Club, as well as Flashdance. The song Neverending Story, then, was composed by Giorgio Moroder, with whom Keith Forsey himself worked. This very eighties song has recently been used for a more than famous series, Stringer Things. The beauty of the song is that you don’t feel the boundaries, neither at the beginning nor at the end, because the music begins and ends in an impalpable nuance. It really is a Neverending Story!
It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Song by R.And.M. Appropriate for today but also, and has been widely used, for the pandemic that we hope to have left behind. The song is known for its fast-flowing stream of consciousness, with many different references, such as a quartet of individuals with the initials “LB”: Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. In a 90s interview with Musician magazine, REM singer Michael Stipe stated that, for “L.B.”, the references came from a dream he had in which he was at a party surrounded by famous people who all shared those initials. In Italy the song was covered by Ligabue, entitled A che ora è la fine del Mondo?
1999
It celebrated the end of Prince’s past millennium in 1999 , but it was also the triumph of eroticism in style. The video, directed by Bruce Gowers, was shot during the last week of rehearsals for the 1999 Tour. He shoots Prince and his band during a live performance, a bit like the Linkin Park we mentioned earlier. Just in time to begin his part after Lisa Coleman, Jill Jones and Dez Dickerson, Prince descends onto the stage from above, sliding down a fire brigade pole, wearing a long shimmering purple coat. The end of the millennium couldn’t get sexier than this!
The End
Let’s go on with the songs on the end… of the year, with one that has the end in the title and beyond. The End by The Doors should be about the ultimate end, death, although the song is also about Jim Morrison’s parents. It contains Oedipal themes about loving the mother and killing the father. Morrison has always been vague about the meaning, explaining, “It could be almost anything you want it to be.”
The Doors developed this song during live performances at Whiskey a Go Go, a Los Angeles club where they were the home band in 1966.
“The End” begins as Jim Morrison’s farewell to Mary Werbelow, his girlfriend who followed him from Florida to Los Angeles and unfolds into an 11-minute epic. An epic that today, but also all the other days of the year, deserves to be heard.
Until the end of the world
Very interesting song by U2 taken from the album Achtung Baby of 1991. The lyrics describe an imaginary conversation between Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot. The first verse discusses the Last Supper, while the second concerns Judas who identifies Jesus with a kiss on the cheek in the Garden of Gethsemane; and the ending is about Judas’ suicide after being overcome by guilt and sadness. 20 years later Patti Smith has remade a very dark version, definitely to listen to.
Last day on Earth
This is one of the “love songs” that Marilyn Manson actually wrote, even if it’s not really a love song. It symbolizes the collapse of everything, perhaps even that of two people who separate but whose love still remains true. This is a song that makes you think “if you knew the world would end tomorrow, who would you want to spend with today? Maybe with Manson?
Time is running out
As I Muse would say, our time is running out, so we’re getting ready to count down to the new year. Take a look at the video: it shows a representation based on the idea of a secret government that instead of making decisions about the course of the world sits around a table wasting time playing with each other. The image that inspired the director of the table where the various soldiers meet is a tribute to Stanley Kubrick ‘s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove while the idea of dance synchronized to the song is freely inspired by the Daft Punk video Around the World. During its composition, the group had the idea of making something similar to Michael Jackson‘s Billie Jean, but the idea was later abandoned as the structure of the song was completed.
Greetings with the Songs on the end… of the year
All that remains is to really wish you a peaceful 2023, full of great music like the one we just talked about.We hope, despite certain themes, to have cheered you up with these excellent songs at the end … of the year. Obviously the intent was ironic!
For my part, I hope that today, singing The Final Countdown by Europe, I will survive, as Gloria Gaynor well said!
#thisistheend
#happy2023
