Music is always subject to change. Over the years a lot of changes have passed us by in popular music. Most changes happen almost organically. One person adds a new instrument to the existing trend of the moment and the other adds a new dimension to it by mixing a particular instrument a little louder within a track. Combined together, a new trend or even a new music genre could emerge, but it kind of feels like you’re riding a wave.
Not so long ago, I wrote a blog about how the saxophone has kind of lost its place in pop music today compared to the 80s and the 90s. Back then, it played a signature part in hits like “Careless Whisper”(George Michael), “Baker Street” (Gerry Rafferty) and even on instrumental hits like “Lily Was Here” (Candy Dulfer and Dave Stewart). Now, it’s very rare to hear a saxophone in a song.
I’m working on a few new songs myself and while thinking about one of them, I was thinking it would be cool to create a fade out. I suddenly realized that you don’t have many songs out anymore with fade outs at the end.
I’ve been traveling this week, so I actually forgot all about this, until someone else raised the subject of fade outs in music as well. A Dutch radio DJ made a YouTube video recently about Bryan Adams big hit “Summer of ’69”. In most countries, this song was a hit sometime in the 80s but for some reason The Netherlands only caught on sometimes in the 90s. The song has a fade out.
According to the DJ, about 15% of songs back in the 80s would have a neat little ending, but most would have fade outs. It was he norm. Nowadays, it’s the other way around. I think he might be right.
However, in communication with Bryan’s co-writer of “Summer of ‘69”, Jim Vallance, the DJ found out that the fade out was added later, but Jim claimed he didn’t know why they’d done that. I guess it was just because it was the thing to do.
The DJ dug a little deeper and managed to trace the original studio recording of the song. In his YouTube video he premiers, exclusive, the original neat ending of “Summer of ‘69”, even triggering a response from Bryan Adams himself questioning the DJ how he managed to get that track.
It’s funny, because I expected a “let’s go out with a bang”-end to this song, but the original non fade-out end sounds more like the song deflates a little at the end.If you want to hear it,here's the original YouTube presentation. It's at the 1.51 mark (or just click here)
