< Book Ends

Book Ends/Music

So the song ended...

WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

  • There's a Hole in the Bucket is a great example. The song starts with Henry saying that there is a hole in the bucket. Liza tells him to fix it. Turns out that the item to fix needed to fix it is also in disrepair, so Liza tells Henry to fix that item first, and so on. Towards the end of the Chain of Deals-esque to-do list Henry needs to transport water. Liza says to use the bucket to transport the water. Henry points out there is a hole in the bucket.
  • Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon begins and ends with a steady, heartbeat-like thumping fading in/out.
    • The Wall begins with someone saying "we came in?" and ends with someone saying "Isn't this where", similar to the Finnegans Wake example above.
    • Animals opens and closes with parts one and two of "Pigs On the Wing", which are significantly lighter in tone than the other songs, and serve as a framing device of sorts for the main narrative.
    • While not identical, Meddle uses swirling wind sounds at the beginning of "One of These Days" whereas "Echoes" ends with whale songs.
    • Wish You Were Here is Book Ended by the two halves of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond". The first half begins with Rick Wright on synthesizer and ends with Wright playing the same synthesizer voice.
    • Greatest Hits Album example: Echoes opens and closes with the first and last tracks of the band's debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn ("Astronomy Domine" and "Bike").
  • Alphaville's Afternoons in Utopia does something similar to The Wall. The first track is an echo of the word "night". The last track is the limerick "There was a young lady named Bright / Whose speed was much faster than light / She departed one day / In the relative way / And returned on the previous....."
  • The first and last tracks of the Kleptones' mashup album 24 Hours are "Still Start" and "Still Ending". The latter is a more-developed version of the former.
  • Some songs in Ar tonelico videogame series began and end the same, most notably the tragic song of Salavec Rhaplanca.
  • Several Genesis albums do this. Selling England By The Pound ends with a short piece that is basicly a reprise of the opener, "Dancing With The Moonlit Knight". A Trick Of The Tail opens with "Dance on a Volcano" and ends with "Los Endos", which both have many of the same riffs and melodies. The live album Seconds Out plays around with them: It opens with "Squonk", which also has similaries to the other two songs mentioned, and ends with medley of "Dance On A Volcano" and "Los Endos".
  • Mirrored by experimental rock group Battles begins with a song called "Race: In," which features a recurring xylophone theme. The last song, "Race: Out" sees a brief return of the same theme just before the last repeating guitar pattern.
  • Both Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere and Friends of Dean Martinez's On the Shore start and end with the clicking of a film-projector. This is pretty much all they have in common.
  • The track "Close to the Edge", from the Yes album of the same name, begins and ends with the sound of birdcalls over wind and running water.
    • More unusually, Fragile has "We Have Heaven" from the middle of side one reprised at the end of the album...huh.
  • Coheed and Cambria's second album, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 does this (sorta).
    • It begins with "The Ring In Return", which consists of an intro, then a short musical interlude, and then a male voice saying "Hello, Apollo, where should I begin?". In the lyric book, the last line of the last song (excluding the hidden one) is "Pray for us all...my dear Appollo(sic) I'll be burning Star IV" (the actual line that is sung is just "Pray for us all" over and over.)
    • Also, the first album, "Second Stage Turbine Blade", has the song "Devils in Jersey City" (not the first song, but close to the beginning), which has a line towards the end--"Why won't you drive me home?". Towards the end of the album, we have "Junesong Provision", which has a line "To drive down...where's Wednesday? where;s Wednesday?". The last song (The End Complete V: On The Brink) of the last album (No World For Tomorrow) has the last line "so long, amory...please drive me home one last time..."
  • In Rush's Caress of Steel, the final song has multiple parts. The first and last of which are very similar in both the musical style and (respectively) the first and last lines sung.
    • Also, Rush's "The Manhattan Project" begins and ends with the same riff on guitar and drums.
  • Fall Out Boy's album Infinity on High both begins and ends with an audience clapping as if it were a live show.
  • A couple songs by Panic! at the Disco. Namely "Camisado" and "Time to Dance".
  • Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar album begins and ends with the same spoken line. In addition, a different phrase bookends the final "act" of the album.
    • Specifically, the beginning of "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" and the end of "Track 99 (Empty Sounds of Hate)"
    • Also, from Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death). There is the sound of an old metal key rattling around in a lock (as if to close the album) on "Count to Six and Die (The Vacuum of All Space Encompassing)", which links to the lock rattling at the opening of "GodEatGod", unlocking the album.
  • System of a Down's double-Concept Album, Mezmerize & Hypnotize, begins with a short introduction called "Soldier Side (intro)", and ends with a song of 3-4 minutes called "Soldier Side".
  • A more unconventional example: Mayhem's second album Grand Declaration of War is a sequel to their earlier EP Wolf's Lair Abyss. The saga as a whole is divided into three sections: I ("Wolf's Lair Abyss"), II (the first half of "Grand Declaration of War") and III (the second half). A riff appears at the very end of "Symbols of Bloodswords", the last track from "Wolf's Lair Abyss", and the album fades out. "A Grand Declaration of War", the first track of part II of the saga fades in with the same riff shifted up a semitone. The riff appears for the third and final time at the start of the track "View from Nihil (Part II of II)", followed by some spoken word vocals and a sample of a nuclear bomb detonating. This concludes part II of the entire saga.
  • AFI's album Sing the Sorrow has deliberate static between the bonus tracks and after the last one. If you listen to that album on repeat, it is virtually impossible to pick out when it switches from "This Time Imperfect" (the last bonus track) to the aptly titled "Miseria Cantare (The Beginning)".
  • Queensrÿche's Operation: Mindcrime concept album begins and ends with the line "I remember now".
  • Brand New's "Daisy" begins and ends with a woman singing the same gospel passage.
  • Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism begins and ends with a sound much like a car running.
  • mc chris's first album Life's a Bitch and I'm Her Pimp begins with Chris' answering machine. This same answering machine message is the last thing you hear on his third album Eating's Not Cheating
  • Iron Maiden do this on their seventh album, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, which opens and ends with the excerpt quoted in Seven Deadly Sins.
    • For songs, "When The Wild Wind Blows" opens and ends with the wind blowing, and "Fear of the Dark"'s lyrics are reversed for intro and outro:

"I am a man who walks alone
And when I'm walking a dark road
...
And when I'm walking a dark road
I am a man who walks alone"

  • On Reanimation, the introduction is a minute long orchestral track. By the time the end of the disc comes around, it's revealed that the electronic-based remix to "Crawling" is built around that.
  • Coldplay's Viva La Vida begins with "Life in Technicolor" and ends with "The Escapist" which are both built around the same sample of music by Jon Hopkins.
    • "Spies" has the refrain "Spies hide out in every corner, but you can't touch them, 'cause they're all spies." But at the end of the song, "we" get over their control, and song ends "...but they can't touch you, cause they're just spies."
    • A minor example is A Rush of Blood to the Head - both the first and last song are 5:19 minutes long.
  • Supertramp's Crime of the Century album starts with a harmonica solo on "School" which is later found in the fadeout of the title track, which ends the album. Many of their concert setlists played off this as well.
    • For a more obscure Supertramp example, their self-titled debut offers two versions of the song "Surely": a 30-second one verse clip at the beginning, and a more fleshed-out two verse, three-minute version at the end that centers more on their instrumental talent.
    • Roger Hodgson's solo DVD Take the Long Way Home has him playing "Give a Little Bit" twice, once at the beginning and again at the end. The second time, of course, with more feeling (and audience participation).
  • Electric Light Orchestra's Eldorado opens with a spoken monologue. The final line of this, "High on a hill, in Eldorado", is looped over the album finale.
    • The first song ("Prologue") of their album Time also starts with the same snippet of sound that the last song ("Epilogue") ends on.
  • Brave Saint Saturn's The Light of Things Hoped For begins with "Prologue," a spoken-word piece played over ambient electronic music. This electronic music is reused as the intro to "Daylight," the last track of the album.
  • Havalina Rail Co.'s The Diamond In The Fish. The first track is an instrumental song, "The Theme from the Diamond in the Fish". The final track is "The Diamond in the Fish", a longer song that ends with the riff from "Theme".
  • Sufjan Stevens:
    • Illinois: It opens with the squeaking of a piano stool and two short introductory tracks, and then goes into the album's first full Epic Rocking, two-part song- "Come On, Feel the Illinoise," which opens with a piano riff and is in Uncommon Time. The last Epic Rocking, two-part song on the album, "The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders," also opens with a piano riff and is in Uncommon Time. It is followed by two short closing tracks and the squeaking of a piano stool.
    • The Age of Adz: The album begins and ends with acoustic, folky songs, while nearly everything in between is electronic and bombastic.
  • The intro and outro of Pearl Jam's Ten album: a short, eerie instrumental that fades into opening song "Once", and comes after the final song, "Release".
  • Agalloch's album The Mantle features the same acoustic guitar riff in the first (instrumental) song "A Celebration for the Death of Man..." and in the end of the next-to-last song "...and the Great Cold Death of the Earth".
  • Don McLean's "Castles in the Air" closes with the same stanza with which it opens: "And if she asks you why / You can tell her that I told you..."
  • The Momus album Ocky Milk begins with a single, isolated guitar note a few seconds before the first song starts, and ends with the same guitar note a few seconds after the last song ends.
  • The Mars Volta's album "Frances The Mute" begins the first song, Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus with the short acoustic piece Sarcophagi, and ends the thirty-two minute song Cassandra Gemini with a reprise of Sarcophagi, in which the song is much louder and clearer and the vocals are much more defined.
  • The Red Hot Chili Peppers video "Otherside" starts and ends with a man lying on the ground.
  • The Notorious B.I.G.'s album "Ready To Die" starts with his birth. The last song "Suicidal Thoughts" ends with his death.
  • Green Day's album 21st Century Breakdown begins with an introduction track that is echoed on the second last track, "American Eulogy". The second track on the album, "21st Century Breakdown", is echoed in the final track, "See The Light".
  • Yellowcard's album "Lights and Sounds" begins with the instrumental track "Three Flights Up". The final minute and a half of the final track "Holly Wood Died" is much like the first track, but with different instrumentation.
    • The bonus track version more accurately mirrors this with "Three Flights Down."
  • There are a ridiculous number of Country music songs featuring this.
  • The Queen album A Day At The Races begins and ends with the same instrumental bit.
  • The first Trans-Siberian Orchestra album begins with "An Angel Came Down," and the story (there are a few non-"story" instrumentals afterwards) ends with "An Angel Returned." The songs have the same tune.
  • The performance of the so-called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band opens and ends with a self-titled song. This doesn't end the album, though (it's hard to know if "A Day in the Life" qualifies as an encore).
  • Sting's album Mercury Falling has its title as the very first and very last words.
  • "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot begins and ends with lines about "the big lake they called 'Gitche Gumee,'" and how she "never gives up her dead."
  • Damn near every single Dierks Bentley puts out.
  • Altar of Plagues Sol EP starts and ends with very similar-sounding ominous electronic noises.
  • Not counting a 40-second outtake reel at the end, Barenaked Ladies' Gordon ends with the song "Crazy" which suddenly crashes into a short reprise of the opening "Hello City" in the fadeout.
  • Elton John's Empty Sky goes through an unusual one of these. The last track is a medley of "Gulliver", a ballad, "It's Hay-Chewed", a jazzy instrumental jam, and a rough patchwork of the songs from the album, starting with "Empty Sky" (which opened the album) and ending with the scream that ended "Gulliver" (this section appropriately titled "Reprise").
  • Kitananx does this with his third album "The Story Of The Beard & The Music" where he has the first song of the album as "Starting The Beard", the song in the middle as "Growing The Beard" and the final song as "Harvest The Beard"
  • Graham Lewis' wracked scream both begins and ends Dome's "The Red Tent I & II" on Dome 2.
  • Alan Parson's solo album "On Air" begins and ends with the track "Blue Blue Sky". The opening piece features fewer lyrics and abruptly ends, where the ending track rises to a crescendo and then fades away.
  • Daniel Amos' Doppelganger begins and ends with songs named "Hollow Man"; both use the same backing music, while the text spoken over them differs.
  • Steely Dan's title track to (final track of) The Royal Scam, begins and ends with the line, "And they wandered in from the city of St. John without a dime."
  • Sky's third album begins with "The Grace", a 30-second statement of a theme on solo guitar. The final track is "Keep Me Safe and Keep Me Warm, Shelter Me From Darkness", which is a triumphant fanfare built around the same melody.
    • Interestingly the songs (as with all Sky songs) are instrumentals, but the melody in question is very clearly based on the title of the second piece.
  • Ween's The Mollusk starts with "Dancing In The Show Tonight" and ends with "She Wanted To Leave (Reprise)" - the "reprise" alluded to in the title is a short instrumental version of "Dancing In The Show Tonight".
  • Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young And Crazy Horse starts with"My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)" and ends with "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)", a more aggressive, electric-guitar-based rearrangement of the same song.
  • Double Nickels On The Dime by The Minutemen begins and ends with the sounds of starting cars.
  • The first track on Christopher Tin's Calling All Dawns, "Baba Yetu," begins with a woman's voice quietly humming a four note phrase. The last track, "Kia Hora Te Marino," ends with that same phrase.
  • Dream Theater's album Octavarium begins and ends with the same note, with an octave difference. Lampshaded with the last line of the last song (also titled "Octavarium"): "This story ends where it began." Systematic Chaos begins and ends with parts one and two of "In the Presence of Enemies". Metropolis Pt 2 begins and ends with the Hypnotherapist speaking. The final song on that album, "Finally Free" even has its own; it begins and ends with the words "Open your eyes, Nicholas".
    • The song "The Great Debate" begins with a singe synth riff, and instruments are added gradually, along with spoken samples. The song ends in pretty much the same way, but in reverse, as instruments are gradually removed until only the original synth riff remains.
  • Norwegian "black n' roll" band Kvelertak's debut Self-Titled Album begins and ends with the same word: Kvelertak.
  • Lifehouse's song "You and Me" opens and closes with the lines What day is it? / And in what month? / This clock never seemed so alive...
  • Fatboy Slim's Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars, where the end of the last song ("Song For Shelter") is a more echoey reprise of the beginning of the first ("Talking B Bout My Baby").
  • Flobots' "Handlebars" begins and ends with the simple "I can ride my bike with no handlebars", signifying that things eventually go back to normal.
  • Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto" starts and ends with a baby being born in the ghetto.
  • The Fall's This Nation's Saving Grace begins with "Mansion" and ends with "To NK Roachment: Yarbles"; the former is an instrumental version of the latter.
  • Danielson's Tri-Danielson!!! (Alpha) opens with a crowd shouting "Tri-Danielson!" and then cheering. The followup album, Tri-Danielson!!! (Omega), ends with a crowd cheering and then shouting "Tri-Danielson!"
  • Funker Vogt's Blutzoll ends with a reprise of "Arising Hero", the first track.
  • Gearwhore's Drive begins and ends with different mixes of "Passion".
  • The first track of Cascada's Everytime We Touch is the title track. The last track is an unplugged version of the song. Same for DHT's Listen To Your Heart.
  • The CD version of Skinny Puppy's Remission has "Glass Houses" as the second track and "Glass Out" as the second-to-last track. The former also has book-ends of its own, beginning and ending with the sample "The beauty of their souls, the sweetness of their characters lives on with us forever" from the film Shadow of a Doubt.
  • Madness' The Liberty Of Norton Folgate plays with this - the same melody as used in its Overture can be heard in the final song (the title track), but is not used at the very end of the song. The song itself, however, contains its own example - the second verse is "With a little bit of this, And a little bit of that, A little bit of what you like does you no harm, And you know that...". This is repeated at the end of the song.
  • Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel begins and ends its A-side with "Bookends Theme". Inside the themes are the story of a lifetime, much in the same vein as PetSounds.
  • "Blue", the last song on REM's Collapse Into Now, eventually turns into a reprise of "Discoverer", the first song on the album.
  • Local H's As Good As Dead starts with "Manifest Density, Pt. 1" and ends with "Manifest Density, Pt. 2".
  • Sonic Sunrise by Mars does this with "Pachelbel 8000", a trance version of Pachelbel's Canon.
  • Speak Now by Taylor Swift opens with Taylor singing "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah", before the accompaniment to "Mine" begins. It ends with Taylor singing the last line of "Long Live", "We will be remembered", with no accompaniment.
    • On the previous album, Fearless, the song Love Story begins and ends with the line "We were both young when I first saw you..."
  • "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" by Wings ends with a reprise of "Band on the Run."
  • Blind Melon's Soup starts with an unlisted intro (officially called "Hello Goodbye") featuring Shannon Hoon singing over a brass band. The closing song "Lemonade" is based around a very similar melody to this intro, and at the very end of the song the same brass band comes in, playing a faster improvisation this time. In fact, originally the album intro was supposed to be the beginning of "Lemonade" itself instead.
  • Deltron 3030's self-titled album begins and ends with the same spoken monologue by Damon Albarn - the second time it's a deliberately poor quality recording with intentional playback errors.
  • This music video for Gyarii Pamyu Pamyu's song Tsukema Tsukeru starts and ends with a... well, book.
  • Casanova by The Divine Comedy starts with a spoken "hello" and ends with a sung "goodbye"
  • Executive Meddling led to Deftones recording a shorter, heavier version of "Pink Maggit" called "Back To School (Mini-Maggit)" and making it the first track on a reissue of White Pony: Thus that version of the album begins and ends with different versions of the same song. It actually works pretty well for an accidental example, especially because the first two and a half minutes or so of "Pink Maggit" sound absolutely nothing like "Back To School".
  • "This Is Love," the last song on Mary Chapin-Carpenter's album Stones On The Road, ends with the melody of the first song "Why Walk When You Can Fly" played on the piano.
  • The first and last things heard on Braids' Frame & Canvas are the sounds of a distant AM radio station.
  • Arcade Fire's album The Suburbs starts and ends with tracks of the same name.
  • Such Great Heights by The Postal Service both begins and ends with a rhythmic beeping sound.
  • The second Self-Titled Album by jazz-pop band Blood, Sweat & Tears begins and ends with a rendition of Erik Satie's "Gymnopedie".
  • "Ordinary Day", by Great Big Sea, begins and ends with the line "I've got a smile on my face, and four walls around me"

And the song will begin again...

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