Top 10 Lengthy Meandering Outros

First of all, I know what you’re thinking: it’s about time. Thank God someone is willing to tackle the important issues.

Today I want to talk about a sneaky little trend that I see in the recording industry: the song with the Lengthy Meandering Outro (LMO)

First, some ‘technical’ ‘lingo’. An ‘outro’ is the opposite of the more common ‘intro’. In the way an intro ‘introduces’ a song or an album, an outro ‘outroduces’ the song or album. So, when you ‘intro’ the song, you don’t just jump in with the double kick insanity, you start with some cowbell and work your way up to it. (Note: This is only an example. I know of no band badass enough to try this). For the outro you reverse the process. Why close out a track with some double kick insanity when you can draw it out for three more minutes, add some harpsichord and a boy’s choir? Make it really memorable.

The longer the outro can meander along before petering out, the better. It should change keys, add some new instruments or melodic lines or even animal sounds. Anything goes, really. The outro is to a song what the cousin who just stopped taking their Ritalin is to your family reunion.

Sidenote: Some albums include an intro, outro or both as individual tracks, the idea being that these will ‘bookend’ the album. I call this lazy. It pushes up the number of tracks on the album, sure. On a 10 track album with an intro and an outro you get 8 songs that you can sing at full volume in your car on the way to work, and that is not okay. Usually, because they are lazy bands, they will even name these tracks 'intro' and 'outro' on their track listing. Do not support these bands.

To be eligible for my list of the top 10 songs with Lengthy Meandering Outros, the outro needed to be a) long and b) meandering (like one of my blog posts). Extra marks were given for outros that changed the tone or dynamic of the song or felt like they added to the ‘story’ of the song. Each band could only enter once; otherwise it would have just been a list of long Led Zeppelin songs. (I actually left out the Zep because I wanted to go for things less well known).

I will list the artist’s name, the song title, the length of the sing and finally use my patented OUTROstanding score rating system (TM) to give you an indication of how much you need that outro in your miserable life. They are in no particular order, unless you count whatever order I want as a system.

Jimmy Eat World - Goodbye Sky Harbour (16 minutes, 11 seconds)

This song goes for a massive 16 minutes! The first 4 minutes are bog-standard rock music, but then it’s like the guys in the band forgot that they were recording a song and decided they wanted to practice an 8-bar repeating pattern for 11 minutes. Have you ever seen one of those shows on TV where someone loops the security footage so the vault still looks empty while they’re clearing it out? In this song Jimmy Eat World do that with your brain. I’ll be humming that goddamn hook 17 days after I last heard the song. The outro is actually way too long, but I love the way the vocal melodies come in and overlap right in the last few minutes. This song kind of asks more questions than it answers. How do you float the idea of a 16 minute song to your bandmates? How many times do you practice it? It would take over an hour to run through it four times!

Okay guys, then you play that run 1200 more times, throw in some 'da da daa's at the end and we're done.

Rated 7/10 OUTROstandings

Guns ‘N’ Roses – November Rain (8 minutes, 57 seconds)

So apparently when humans get too hot, they sweat, yeah? But for Axl Rose, who had more hair than a yeti, and then usually slapped a bandana or a cap or both on top of that ginger rat’s nest, this thing called ‘sweating’ didn’t work right. It just got reabsorbed into his fibrous armour. Plus he was always running around like a pyromaniac at a petrol station. He must have been so tanked.

So when Axl got tired, he would just cede the stage to Slash for 3-4 minutes and get his breath back. Slash is part man and part jungle spirit. He’s what I imagine Jesus would be like if he had worn a top hat and rocked your fucking face off at Gethsemane Fest ‘-1. And ultimately, whether Slash closed the song out with some crazy lick or Axl finished off with a lyric like “Ai-yi-yi-ee-yi-yi. Yiiii,” didn’t matter. You were rocked, and that was the main thing.

Rated 8/10 OUTROstandings

(Honourable Mention: Every other 8 minute G’N’R song)

Weezer – Only In Dreams (8 minutes exactly. Gotta respect that)

This is the one that started it all for me. As a teen my best friend T and I would get our electric guitars and attempt to play along to the two overlapping outro solos on the CD. I never got past the first page on the sheet music. A bit of a liability, I was, I’m afraid. (T was always the superior guitarist to me, still is by the look of it. I believe his secret was something to do with taking lessons, followed up with some practicing.)

When I listen to this song, I dig both parts, the vocals and the outro solo. But the way those dual solos ratchet up the intensity and then the drums and the bass just crash through everything to bring it home – magic.

Rated OUTROstandings 10/10

(Honourable Mention: The Angel and the One)

Foo Fighters – A320 (5 minutes, 45 seconds)

This song – and I’m not kidding here – is off the Godzilla soundtrack. How this piece of magical deliciousness and an unreleased Ben Folds track ended up on the same soundtrack as P. Diddy covering Kashmir I do not know. I’m assuming the title refers to the model number on an aircraft. I have two supporting arguments for this theory:

1) I am a genius.

2) This outro literally makes me feel like I’m in an aeroplane that has hit turbulence. This song lifts you up, shakes you around and then brings you in to land. Beautiful. (Now you just have to try and find it!)

Rated 9/10 OUTROstandings

(Honourable Mention: Razor. Watch him play it to his baby on the Skin and Bones DVD. I want to be Dave Grohl’s baby. Other OUTROstanding tracks include Aurora and End Over End.)

Tonic – Let Me Go (5 minutes, 54 seconds)

Tonic are reuniting! New album! This year! Woohooooo!! Okay, got that out of the way. This song has a noticeable shift in dynamic as it moves from the main song to the outro, as well as a key change. While the first part is pleading and gentle (which I love) the outro is more aggressive and insistent (which I love). If you’re going to invest almost six minutes in listening to a song, you better like the whole damn thing. And I do. And you should too.

Rated 9/10 Outstandings

Semisonic – I Wish (7 minutes, 56 seconds)

Most outros up the ante in terms of tempo or dynamic, but Dan Wilson from Semisonic runs his own game. He doesn’t have to live by the man’s rules! Having made his case lyrically, he leaves it to the piano to bring us on home. Ahh.

Rated 7/10 OUTROstandings

Oasis – Champagne Supernova (7 minutes, 28 seconds)

As amazing as a 7-and-a-half minute song is, more amazing still is the assumption that the Gallagher brothers at one stage in their career were sober enough to perform this song in its entirety. Then again, it is equally plausible that this song would actually improve if the majority of the band were to perform it while intoxicated. Who really knows?

Rated 8/10 OUTROstandings

Hoobastank – More than a Memory (7 minutes, 16 seconds)

After The Reason, Hoobastank were left in a tricky position. They had released one crappy album no one cared about and one album that lit up the sales charts like Snoop Dogg lights up anything that isn’t nailed down. Ideally, they wanted to repeat the sales performance of The Reason, rather than their self-titled release. They did this by crafting a song that throws every instrument ever made at you, and seeing what sticks. I couldn't even guess at what's playing when by the end of this track. The assist list must look like a philharmonic orchestra, and it sounds like a mashup between a troupe of mariachis and the French Resistance. Still, nice LMO, guys.

Rated 6/10 OUTROstandings

Incubus – Aqueous Transmission (7 minutes, 48 seconds)

Not so much an outro as a slow fade to the sound of frogs chirping. Love the Japanese feel too, for obvious reasons.

Rated 5/10 OUTROstandings

Van Halen – Humans Being (5 minutes, 8 seconds)

It’s tricky to do a really powerful LMO on a Van Halen song, because Eddie is contractually obligated to do 13 solos within the body of any given song already. It becomes almost untenable. But in Humans Being, one of the tracks written for the movie Twister, Van Halen throw in a bit of an outro. Mostly to stop Sammy Hagar from having the last word, I reckon.

Rated 4/10 OUTROstandings

(Honourable Mention: Right Now. Mostly because it’s like Alex Van Halen forgets that they’re fading the song out at the end.)

In much the same way that Chad Kroeger incorporates lashings of sex and violence into his lyrics in order to sell albums, I have realised in the course of writing this article that there is a mathematical formula to this outro business. Really, anything less than a minute on the outro just isn’t trying hard enough. But if you run too far over about four minutes everyone knows you’re just running a scam on your record label, and probably want out of a contract or something. You really want a 1:1 or 1:1.5 ratio for your actual song/outro in order to be successful. Then again, all the maths and theory in the universe can’t explain the rise and fall and rise again of Britney Spears, so maybe that kind of stuff isn’t really that important.

Now it’s your turn. What songs do you know that have LMOs? Drop me a comment. I will definitely listen to them (bearing in mind that it has to rock somewhat, I don’t want to listen to Enya hum to trees for 9-and-a-half minutes) and may even give an OUTROstanding rating to your recommendations, if they are worthy.