The use of a fade-out to end a song has long divided opinion. While some view it as lazy – why not just come up with a proper ending? – others believe that the gradual volume drop can be an artform in itself.
Sitting in the latter camp, it transpires, is Australian country-pop singer-songwriter Keith Urban. He recently flagged-up his love of the fade-out in an interview with Billboard as he promoted Flow State, his new album of yacht rock covers (plus one new song of his own).
Asked whether his intention was to remain faithful to the original versions or put his own stamp on the songs, Urban said that he was keen to uphold what he sees as a tradition of musicians freeing themselves up as they draw to a close.
“One of the areas I've always found that I like to go off script, if you will, is at the end of songs,” he says. “People who grew up in that era where there were fades know all about turning the volume up because this amazing thing happened right at the very end of the fade – you could just hear the guitarist do something that was so cool, because typically the session players figure, ‘We're out by now, they're not going to use all this, we're just now playing for playing's sake.’ That's when all the cool stuff starts happening.”
He’s got a point - we can think of quite a few examples of songs that we wish wouldn’t fade out so soon because lots of interesting musical things are starting to happen.
This isn’t a new discovery for Urban, though – he says that he’s always encouraged his band members to cut loose at the end of songs, and has continued to embrace the fade-out as a result of that.
“I've found so many times on my records, the reason why [2006 single] Stupid Boy and some of those [songs] had these long outros is what the band would do at those periods was really cool, and I didn't want it to not be heard,” he says.
Urban is certainly in the minority though: for whatever reason, most artists these days favour ‘proper’ endings. In the streaming era, where a lot of people listen to multi-artist playlists rather than complete albums, statement finishes have become the norm, and the fade-out is increasingly uncommon.
In fact, even on Flow State – which features guest appearances from yacht rock legend Michael McDonald and John Mayer – not every song has a fade-out, but there are some on there, and as the music dies away, you still get to imagine what happened next as the band played on.
