📌 5:15 TYPO the roman numeral above Ebm should be “bvi”, not iv. Sorry for any confusion and thanks to the commenter who brought it to my attention. Also, 2:52 to G chord is IV not I 😅
Phew!!! I spent a few minutes trying to to make sense of that before coming here to ask about it. When I was a teenager, there was a prog-rock DJ on a local station who would sequence songs in ways that showed off various musical relationships. One of his favorite tricks was playing a song that ended unresolved, followed by a song with an opening chord that resolved the previous one. He never said a word about this; you just had to notice. I'm forever grateful that he started my ear training and music theory education without my being consciously aware of it. Also, there are some song sequences on classic rock albums that do the same trick. One example involves the Led Zeppelin tracks "The Song Remains The Same" and "Rain Song". The former ends on an achingly unresolved chord, which becomes a leading tone as it resolves up into the first chord of the latter.
I mean it’s not really the Mandela effect, as it did happen at some point, but @Paddy-ip7qk is correct (if my Spanish comprehension is as good as I’d like to believe) that it only happened at Live Aid.
my favorite example of an unresolved chord is "are we still friends" by tyler the creator, because it gets resolved when you play the first track of the album again, so it creates a musical loop additional to the storytechnical loop.
its almost resolved by the 1st track cause its like a different frequency than the one that would fit are we still friends perfectly so if you play it immediately it feels kinda off
At least there was Revolver songs mentioned. Abbey Road is on the thumbnail too. He didn’t mention a single damn Abbey Road song. What a waste of my time.
That was the first song that I thought of. In fact, I specifically pointed out it's lack of closure (sans cadence) in the comment section of the Beatles own vid for the song. Excellent Catch!!! 🎼TD, Boston
@@solarprogeny6736 no, I think it feels more like the song definitely lands in a different place than it started, but that somehow that feels like the right place
5:00 Yeah, no but We are the Champions does get resolved, almost everytime, at least when there's a crowd singing along. Ending that way almost ensures the crowd finished it for you ".... of the woooooorld"
My favorite example of a song not resolving at the end is "for no one" by the beatles. Its a song about lost love, a love that "should have lasted years" and while shes moved on, you cant get over what you had, ending both your love for her, as well as the song itself, unresolved. Truly heartbreaking
My favorite example of this is “Once a Day” by Mac Miller, which is the last track on the album “Circles.” The last note of the song is very discordant, but, if you let the album loop, you’ll realize that the first note of the first song, the title track, is actually the resolution to the last-making for a perfect loop!
That's a lovely idea. Didn't know Mac Miller cared so much about harmony, it's pretty smart Edit: just noticed the name of the album was 'Circles', which adds to the effect lol
@@DavidBennettPiano same here, yet John considered it just a garbage throwaway, which was not only typically John-like but shows how so often artists have trouble neutrally evaluating their own work
I never thought of the sustained chord at the end of We Are the Champions making it "more" resolved. If anything, a sustained chord ADDS to the incompleteness, because sustaining a chord by itself is something that is typically resolved by going to the unsustained counterpart.
It's suspended, not sustained. The chord loses its major or minor quality because it's suspended and replaced with a fourth or a second. They are also very ambiguous. For example, a Dsus2 and an Asus4 have the exact same notes in them.
Both this one and Silly Love Songs are unresolved by way of being cut down from the internal chorus, even more with Champions. Also, whatever chord "of the world" plays over isn't the one he says would resolve it, and so sounds even wronger than leaving it there.
I love it when people sprinkle in these interesting ideas in their songs. We need more people doing stuff like this because unresolved chords are so good
Lucky from OK Computer is just amazing... The chord progression in E minor, flirting mith major dominant seventh's, ending on that C7 to the delicate B7. Must listen, one of THE best by Radiohead
@@DavidBennettPiano David your videos are amazing, and all the examples are great! Glad we agree on Lucky, just love it. Take care and please, please, please keep giving us this content❤
Best example of a non-resolving song ending is "Pull Me Under" By Dream Theater. The only way I can describe it is "It just sort of stops" Before I knew this was intentional, I always thought the mp3 had bugged or something. It's the most abrupt ending to the song
How about the ending to the "Scenes from a Memory" album? Talk about an abrupt ending! The interesting thing is that they carried that ending to the intro of "The Glass Prison" on the next album.
My impression is that happens a lot. (For example, Michael McDonald "resolves" What a Fool Believes at the end every time I've heard a live version. I hope it gives David a sense of "resolution". I personally hate it.)
I've studied and taught classical music my entire life. In 1990 I wrote a set of variations on the hymn tune "Stories of Jesus." One variation was entitled, "Ives: The Disturbed Child." Other movements were "Mozart: The Playful Child," "Bach: The Serious Child," and "Konkel: The Contemporary Child." This video justified my composition and variation! Ives is so unique, I fell off my chair when you played the Ives at the end of the video!" All I can say is... "I LOVE ALL MUSIC!"
"For No One" by The Beatles if my favorite example. It ends on the V chord in an unusual way: two iterations of decreasing tension: First heard is the G9 chord, then "resolving" to the "less tense" chord of G7. Isn't that a sort of resolution? In a way, but it never resolves back to the expected C chord. The ambiguity and feeling of being left up in the air is a cadence I've always thought was a perfect fit to the lyrics.
As a musician, I have never heard that Charles Ives piece before... Although at first I was excited to hear the unresovled ending, it left me with such a pit in my stomach... Well played Ives. Well played.
I really like the Queen "We Are The Champions" example - it makes the song all the more interesting, giving it both an infinite quality (it's almost like ending there allows it to loop in your mind if that makes any sense, because you can hear "of the worrrrrllllddd" coming on the F chord). But also leaving out both the chord and the final lyric casts a shadow of doubt and mystery over that final line, uncertainty over being a champion in the end - which I find quite interesting. It's worth noting that in the live versions of that song, they would complete the final line and end on the tonic chord. Perhaps leaving it linger for thousands of fans in a stadium would have been overwhelmingly tense! ;)
I seem to remember hearing that at first they would end it like the record, but all the fans would sing “of the world” after it, so they decided to start resolving it.
SOOO many IV chord endings in songs On the 4th beat of a bar: "Freeze Frame" J. Geils Band; "Sothern Cross" CSN; "Who Can It Be Now" Men at Work; "Faithfully" Journey; "Stay (I Missed You)" Lisa Loeb; "All Star" Smash Mouth; "Rock of Ages" Def Leppard; "You Learn" Alanis Morissette; "Drops of Jupiter" Train; "All of the Stars" Ed Sheeran; "Lotus" REM; "Blinding Lights" The Weeknd On the 3rd beat of a bar: "School's Out" Alice Cooper; "Overkill" Men at Work; "Just Like Heaven" The Cure; "Home Sweet Home" Motley Crue; "Wicked Game" Chris Issak On the 2nd beat of a bar "Mother" Pink Floyd; "Whip It" Devo; "Beds Are Burning" Midnight Oil; "Cannonball" The Breeders On the 1st beat of a bar "This Time" Bryan Adams; "Private Idaho" B-52s Nearly as many V chord endings "Sir Duke" Stevie Wonder; "You Shook Me All Night Long" ACDC; "Another One Bites the Dust" Queen; "Middle of the Road" The Pretenders; "99 Luftballons" Nena; "Mr. Jones" Counting Crows; "Sweet Emotion" (outro) Aerosmith; "Synchronicity II" (outro) The Police; "Dream On" Aerosmith; "Moving in Stereo" The Cars; "Possession" Sarah McLachlan vi/bVI chord endings "Handy Man" James Taylor; "Don't Get Me Wrong" The Pretenders; "Scar Tissue" Red Hot Chili Peppers; "Just What I Needed" The Cars; "You, Me & the Bourgeoisie" The Submarines iii/bIII chord endings "Nobody Home" Pink Floyd; "One (is the loneliest number)" Three Dog Night; "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" Culture Club ii chord endings: "Piece of My Heart" Big Brother & Holding Company; "Because" The Beatles (iidim7) bVII chord endings (see reply to zalditoes633 post)
Heard an urban legend where a pianist had an awful neighbour…when practicing their scales each day they would deliberately *not* play the final (tonic) note/chord…hour after hour, day after day of getting to VII and….no resolution! Rumour has it the neighbour left in less than a fortnight! 😊
Bruno Mars’ “Talking To The Moon” ending on the Dominant V7/vi chord with the lyrics “I know you’re somewhere out there, somewhere far away…” is genius 🎉 Giving it a sense of wonder and unresolve 👍
Makes sense since the 1960s were a period of massive experimentation in pop music. The sound of mainstream music completely changed between 1964 and 1967, and arguably also between 1967 and 1970.
@@Atlas65 But even before Jazz though there are many examples in impressionist music (In the Ravel/Debussy era) where it became more common to not resolve anything.
"Canção da América" by the great brazilian singer Milton Nascimento is another example of song that has a non resolving end. The last line says "any day, my friend, we'll meet..." For that this melodic feature fits perfectly.
One of the former Panic at the Disco members had a side project called The Young Veins and their song “Dangerous Blues” ends on an unresolved chord that I think adds to the message of the song (realizing that love isn't “perfect”)
Adia by Sarah McLachlan is in C-minor but she ends on a G-major chord which really gives the song an unresolved feeling since the chord prior is Bb. An interesting use of the vi chord was in differing versions of Goodbye to You by Michelle Branch. The song is in Ab and the album version ends on the Ab flat major tonic, but the single version ends on the Fm (vi) chord. She even changes it up in different live performances.
Dream Sweet in Sea Major by Miracle Musical is my favorite unresolved ending. It gets across the gravity of what's happening without ruining the serenity of the song.
Excellent as usual. I like the example of For No One - ending on a V7 sus4 to V7 (I think). What's great about it is the way it matches and enhances the unresolved narrative of the lyrics. Her love has gone but somehow the singer isn't quite yet able to let go.
first thought was for no-one by the beatles. that it reflects the content of the song "a love thay should have lasted years" is so good, shows what a great song composer McCartney was
Some songs shouldn’t resolve, that’s something I truly believe in. Resolving a dramatic or emotional song with a boring 1 chord with no extensions can make a song feel corny, and sometimes just letting a piano or guitar ring out on a dissonant chord can turn into a beautiful sound once it’s just the overtones left ringing
A wonderful example for me is 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams'! The ending part, which is already a complete mess in my opinion, suddenly and abruptly ends the F minor song with a quick E5 power chord. Such a weird yet cool ending!
I always disliked that particular Greenday song and really disliked the ending but honestly your comment just made me actually appreciate what they were doing there
The first song (or songs since there is multiple variations of the song) that came to mind when I thought of a song with no resolution was the song Now or Never from the Splatoon series since it ends on the 7th note after an arpeggio of notes climbing the lydian scale but never reaching the octave
Ah yes, the ending of Now Or Never. Scruffy did a video about that exact quirk of this song a few years ago. Really adds to the tension of how a Turf War can come down to the wire. Case in point the most recent Splatfest, I was playing with some friends and we got a 333x Battle that came down to the wire but what saved us was a teammate using their special last second to paint *just enough* for us to win by 0.5%
This reminded me of The Black Hit from Space by The Human League. It's a song about a cosmic horror trapped in a record unleashing all kinds of surrealistic disasters once it's played and the final line is "It's the hit that's never gone | Time stops when you put it-", then a beat wraps it up, no final chord.
My favourite unresolved ending is Bob Marley's Redemption Song. It's as if Bob was telling us, without words, that we should try to finish his song in real life, to try and find the redemption we haven't found yet as a world.
"A Trick of the Tail" by Genesis off their album of the same name is a hidden gem in this regard. It ends on a hauntingly beautiful cycle of chords, postponing returning to the I chord forever.
This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us/Sparks, ends on the VIIth chord. Firth of Fifth/Genesis ends on a suspended VIIth. In The Ballad of Lucy Jordan the vocal ends unresolved.
One of my favourite non-tonic endings is ‘Eleventh Earl of Mar’. It’s not very well known (outside of the Prog milieu), but it’s one of the most jarring cadences I’ve ever heard. The song ends with a reprise of its intro and lands on the mediant of its parallel major key, itself a minor chord. It’s a heartbreaking finish.
My favorite example of this is Je te laisserai des mots by Patrick Watson. The second-to-last chord actually is a resolution, but then there's an unexpected unresolved chord after it. This unresolved chord sounds like it wants to resolve to the first chord of the song, so you could just play it in a loop.
There's a song called "Already Gone", by Two Door Cinema Club, that takes this to the extreme by actively cutting out the ending of the final chorus. It goes "we could've lived together a-" and in the CZcams comments you can see a bunch of people going "does it just end like that???" It does! I find it quite clever songwriting, too, because the whole song is about a computer's message to the world when the end of the Internet approaches (or something), so the connection gets cut abruptly. Also, of course, the song itself is "already gone"!
A song I learnt just yesterday that appears to be on its way to resolve but makes a rapid turn to finish unresolved is 'Inconsciente Colectivo'. A song that talks about freedom, the end of oppresion and the gift of democracy in a dictatorial country as Argentina was in the early 80's. I think it's a musical metaphor to say: the end of it all is near (the dictatorship ended the following year), but we still have to fight back and resist some time more (the lyrics also reinforce that meaning). Also, it's a really short song (2mins if you ignore the almost silent coda in the studio version), so go and give it a listen.
Side note: a song that uses the same trick is "Los Dinosaurios", that talks more about the darkness of the period in a more melancholic way, only to finish the song with "they'll dissappear", implying that the dictators who "dissapeared" thousands of people (they were klld and never found) will also end up having what they deserve: punishment. The trials finally happened in 1985, and there's a film nominated to the Academy Award called "Argentina: 1985" that uses Inconsciente Colectivo as its credits song.
Thanks, Long-time listener, first time contributor. I wish you could have taught me music appreciation when I was in grade school. Not a serious musician but I like to know how it works
I don’t know what note Michael Crawford ends on in Music of the Night, but I’m 99% sure it’s not the tonic note. I’m 100% sure that it’s staggeringly beautiful. Gives me goosebumps to listen to it.
Within the classic rock realm, you're missing a BIG one with "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago. After the final iteration of the chorus, driving guitar gives way to the final brassy statements from the horn section - culminating in a dissonant, jazzy chord that brings the song to a thrilling conclusion.
Far from it. At least Live and Let Die has that spy-sounding minor key hook (the parts that are in double-time). And it uses some chromaticism in spots. There are other Bond songs that are just straight up pop songs. Check out the Die Another Day theme by Madonna. It's an awful club song that has nothing to do with James Bond.
Probably one of my favorite unresolved endings would be Times Like These by Foo Fighters, ending on the VII chord (C instead of D). Granted that song is already bizarre in typical modern music, but still great.
my favorite example of this is Pushit by TOOL. most of the song is in A minor, but then towards the end it modulates to D minor, and the last riff ends on the flat6 of D minor (Bflat) but in relation to A minor this is a flat2 interval, a lot of dissonance and one of my favorite endings of possibly my favorite TOOL song
One of my favourite unresolved endings is "Learn to Fly" by Foo Fighters. This band uses the unresolved ending quite frequently, but this is a stand-out example. I'm surprised that you unresolved Beatles list didn't include "A Hard Day's Night"...
i was surprised going away to college by blink 182 wasnt mentioned, it's ending is much less resolving at the end than whats my age again, and i think it works super well playing off the rest of the song
I don't think popular music gets to do something older styles of music do, which is to have an ending that sounds like it's going all to hell but suddenly swerves into a very satisfying resolution (the opposite of the Ives example). For example, the Fugue from Louis Vierne's Symphony No. 1 for organ is in D minor. After a cadenza, it twice resolves from B dim7 to E7, then while holding a high D it walks up the pedals from D7/F# to G add2, G add2/A, Gm add2/Bb (super crunchy!), Gm/C# and finally a Dsus4 which turns around a blazing bright D major. I won't link it directly, but "Louis Vierne - Symphonie No.1, Op.14 (Score Video)" around 12:30 is well worth a listen. Loved your video!
I love that the Beatles were doing this as early as 1962, in Ask Me Why. And that Charles Ives anticipated them by 60 years, with his Second Symphony. He really was ahead of his time.
Great video David. Have you listened to the One Hand Clapping version of Live And Let Die? It's very surprising because right after the Ebm at the end they finish with Bb, which I suppose was the intention Paul had when he wrote it, using a minor plagal cadence to the relative major (and I suppose that's why you labelled the Ebm as a iv instead of a bvi?). It's only when l listened to this version that this chord finally made sense to me; but it works so well on taking your mind off the song and into what comes after, which is a film.
Check out The Last Mall by Steely Dan. It’s lack of resolution works perfectly with the lyrics, which is about the end of the world. The song doesn’t resolve, and ends abruptly, like the world. Brilliant.
Songs I'm surprised weren't mentioned in the video or the comments: Linkin Park - What I've Done, Numb Foo Fighters - Everlong Nine Inch Nails - The Hand That Feeds Chris Cornell - You Know My Name Mudvayne - Death Blooms (This one being the least resolved ending of the group)
Not strictly in this context, but you mentioned cinematic, so I will mention the spooky unresolved ending to the Twentieth Century Fox riff at the opening of Alien 3
Je Te Laisseri Des Mots is one of my favorite songs that do this exact thing. It’s truly a wonderfully unique finally that leaves the end of the song up for a kind of speculation.
another one of my favorite songs that doesn't fully resolve at the end is Glimpse of Us by Joji. It's melancholicly beautiful with the addition from the context of the lyrics. The unresolved Eb7 vividly shows the feeling of missing someone. Even though the song has ended, the pain still lingers in the composer's heart.
The Beatlesque "Jumping Fences" by The Olivia Tremor Control ends on a minor iv chord, leaving a bittersweet ending to such a sunny song - I always loved the way it ended.
Glimpse of us by Joji is one of my favorite examples of an unresolved chord. The song ends with a V chord, which perfectly describes the feeling of a relationship ending without closure
Good day sunshine, And your bird can sing, For No One just from Revolver. And I found those looking for another song that I'm guessing isn't on that album ...
I love the Charles Ives example - having listened to the whole symphony which is pretty straight-forward classical music (by Ives' standards anyway) it really feels like "the most unresolved ending ever"
The Ramones' first couple of albums have quite a few tunes that don't resolve on the tonic: "Judy is a Punk", "Listen to My Heart", "I Remember You"- many others...
I mostly play CCM these days, and there are a good number of songs in that genre that have unresolved endings. The most recent example I've run into is The Commission by Cain, which is especially poignant as the closing line is "Goodbye is not the end.". I've finally gotten my band to accept and even embrace the lack of resolution in many songs.
My favourite is Born to Kill by Matthew Good Band. It's the penultimate song and last "loud rock" song on its album. It crescendos into orchestral strings and chaos for a good minute before abruptly switching to a ring out mid-measure to end.
In the song Motorway by Fearofdark, it tricks you at the end into thinking it's not going to resolve, but then the song plays its last few notes and eventually resolves in an extremely satisfying way. Fearofdark songs are always full of surprises.
This makes me realize I've never focused on resolving my songs before. I just end them in what I think is the best way. I thought all these songs sounded as resolved as they needed to be lol
📌 5:15 TYPO the roman numeral above Ebm should be “bvi”, not iv. Sorry for any confusion and thanks to the commenter who brought it to my attention.
Also, 2:52 to G chord is IV not I 😅
What about songs that end with the iv chord?
also at 2:52 the first G chord should be IV, not I
Phew!!! I spent a few minutes trying to to make sense of that before coming here to ask about it.
When I was a teenager, there was a prog-rock DJ on a local station who would sequence songs in ways that showed off various musical relationships. One of his favorite tricks was playing a song that ended unresolved, followed by a song with an opening chord that resolved the previous one. He never said a word about this; you just had to notice. I'm forever grateful that he started my ear training and music theory education without my being consciously aware of it.
Also, there are some song sequences on classic rock albums that do the same trick. One example involves the Led Zeppelin tracks "The Song Remains The Same" and "Rain Song". The former ends on an achingly unresolved chord, which becomes a leading tone as it resolves up into the first chord of the latter.
@@NotBest713well spotted! Added that to the disclaimer! 😅
@@DavidBennettPianoHey David, can you make a Part 2 to this video soon?
Every time I hear We Are The Champions I'm always waiting for a final "of the woorrrrrld" on the end.
OMG I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE
We all sing it any way... Well I do
Eso es porque la mayoría recuerda la versión del Live Aid, donde sí la canta así.
everyone sings it like that to the point where it’s considered a mandela affect lol
I mean it’s not really the Mandela effect, as it did happen at some point, but @Paddy-ip7qk is correct (if my Spanish comprehension is as good as I’d like to believe) that it only happened at Live Aid.
my favorite example of an unresolved chord is "are we still friends" by tyler the creator, because it gets resolved when you play the first track of the album again, so it creates a musical loop additional to the storytechnical loop.
I was really hoping this would be in the video but I'm glad to see someone in the comments pointed it out
Oh that's good. I like that.
its almost resolved by the 1st track cause its like a different frequency than the one that would fit are we still friends perfectly so if you play it immediately it feels kinda off
My LG microwave's little melody for "your food is ready" is unresolved, which makes me mentally add a tonic tone every time I hear it.
I was curious so I looked up a video of that tune. AAARGH!
Good thing you can shut it off!
this made me laugh but i feel you 😂
Seeing Beatles’ Revolver album on the thumbnail, I was expecting a mention of For No One, but my hope was left unresolved…
Bro same wtf lol
ICWYDT
At least there was Revolver songs mentioned. Abbey Road is on the thumbnail too. He didn’t mention a single damn Abbey Road song. What a waste of my time.
I want to tell you
Bravo sir
That was the first song that I thought of. In fact, I specifically pointed out it's lack of closure (sans cadence) in the comment section of the Beatles own vid for the song.
Excellent Catch!!!
🎼TD, Boston
The ending of Brightside still feels like such a solid landing somehow
probably because you imagine the landing note in your head out of a desire to solve it
@@solarprogeny6736 no, I think it feels more like the song definitely lands in a different place than it started, but that somehow that feels like the right place
"People Are Strange" by The Doors has one of my favorite unresolved endings. The word painting is perfect because it ends on the word "strange."
5:00 Yeah, no but We are the Champions does get resolved, almost everytime, at least when there's a crowd singing along. Ending that way almost ensures the crowd finished it for you ".... of the woooooorld"
Exactly, it's double unresolved. Lyrically and musically
Yep, that was clearly the whole point of why they wrote it that way.
in the live version, they do end it with the resolved version though 😎
My favorite example of a song not resolving at the end is "for no one" by the beatles. Its a song about lost love, a love that "should have lasted years" and while shes moved on, you cant get over what you had, ending both your love for her, as well as the song itself, unresolved. Truly heartbreaking
No Radiohead example??😱😱
David has kept this video unresolved by not using a Radiohead example.
Truly a man of his word
😂😂@@avijatsinharoy8944
He really has left us high and dry.
What, 12 different beatles/Paul McCartney examples isn't enough for you?
@@avijatsinharoy8944 ha - nice one 🎉
My favorite example of this is “Once a Day” by Mac Miller, which is the last track on the album “Circles.” The last note of the song is very discordant, but, if you let the album loop, you’ll realize that the first note of the first song, the title track, is actually the resolution to the last-making for a perfect loop!
That's a lovely idea. Didn't know Mac Miller cared so much about harmony, it's pretty smart
Edit: just noticed the name of the album was 'Circles', which adds to the effect lol
The same thing applies for Tyler the Creators album "IGOR"
That's cool, but reading your comment I expected a more perfect circle, like the one Pink Floyd did in The Wall.
Mumble rap
Yaay! Before I even clicked on this video title, "And Your Bird Can Sing" came to mind. Such an underrated masterpiece!
I love that song 😊
@@DavidBennettPiano same here, yet John considered it just a garbage throwaway, which was not only typically John-like but shows how so often artists have trouble neutrally evaluating their own work
I never thought of the sustained chord at the end of We Are the Champions making it "more" resolved. If anything, a sustained chord ADDS to the incompleteness, because sustaining a chord by itself is something that is typically resolved by going to the unsustained counterpart.
well I don't think so, because if it wasn't a sus chord, it would have a leading note
It's suspended, not sustained. The chord loses its major or minor quality because it's suspended and replaced with a fourth or a second. They are also very ambiguous. For example, a Dsus2 and an Asus4 have the exact same notes in them.
Both this one and Silly Love Songs are unresolved by way of being cut down from the internal chorus, even more with Champions. Also, whatever chord "of the world" plays over isn't the one he says would resolve it, and so sounds even wronger than leaving it there.
It actually sounds like the chorus will start again!
@@jeffr.1681 But that's not the expected chord either.
That Ives piece sounds like the conductor got flattened by an anvil at the end.😂
I love it when people sprinkle in these interesting ideas in their songs. We need more people doing stuff like this because unresolved chords are so good
9:41 that was funny. Almost as if the song hit the record scratch!
The conductor had to swat a bee with the baton at the very end.
Sounded like the orchestra was running along and hit a wall. Brilliant!
what chord was that anyways?
@@brianwolverton9834 All twelve notes of the scale.
@@TheMister123except, I believe, the root.
I love What’s My Age Again; super well-crafted song
"Going Away to College" has a bigger unresolved ending, though it leads to What's My Age Again
@@alexiluffy216 I love all the lead-ins between songs on the album
Lucky from OK Computer is just amazing...
The chord progression in E minor, flirting mith major dominant seventh's, ending on that C7 to the delicate B7. Must listen, one of THE best by Radiohead
Oh that’s a great example! I should have included it!
@@DavidBennettPiano David your videos are amazing, and all the examples are great! Glad we agree on Lucky, just love it.
Take care and please, please, please keep giving us this content❤
It goes perfectly with the lyric too: "we are standing on the edge..." A musical ellipsis.
@@dentonpergolas9107 Veeery true my friend. To end like that... such a Radiohead thing to do!
Best example of a non-resolving song ending is "Pull Me Under" By Dream Theater. The only way I can describe it is "It just sort of stops"
Before I knew this was intentional, I always thought the mp3 had bugged or something. It's the most abrupt ending to the song
"Dialog" from Chicago V.
How about the ending to the "Scenes from a Memory" album? Talk about an abrupt ending! The interesting thing is that they carried that ending to the intro of "The Glass Prison" on the next album.
Ozzy's Tinkertrain does the same thing. And, of course, The Beatles' I Want You (She's So Heavy).
NIN Perfect Drug has got to have the most incomplete, abrupt ending ever. It literally ends mid-word.
@@Larry_Ibarra That ending of I Want You (She's So Heavy) is monstrous.
I always liked the ending of Good Day Sunshine. It sort of end on a modulated V chord
That ending is what makes the song really worthy
Queen adds the final F when they play it live.
My impression is that happens a lot. (For example, Michael McDonald "resolves" What a Fool Believes at the end every time I've heard a live version. I hope it gives David a sense of "resolution". I personally hate it.)
Interesting!
This is true about damage inc by Metallica too
"of the WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORLD"
in other words, you can only get the resolution if you pay for the concert ticket.
an early example of Pay to Win!
I've studied and taught classical music my entire life. In 1990 I wrote a set of variations on the hymn tune "Stories of Jesus." One variation was entitled, "Ives: The Disturbed Child." Other movements were "Mozart: The Playful Child," "Bach: The Serious Child," and "Konkel: The Contemporary Child." This video justified my composition and variation! Ives is so unique, I fell off my chair when you played the Ives at the end of the video!" All I can say is... "I LOVE ALL MUSIC!"
"For No One" by The Beatles if my favorite example. It ends on the V chord in an unusual way: two iterations of decreasing tension: First heard is the G9 chord, then "resolving" to the "less tense" chord of G7. Isn't that a sort of resolution? In a way, but it never resolves back to the expected C chord. The ambiguity and feeling of being left up in the air is a cadence I've always thought was a perfect fit to the lyrics.
Better example. And in sense with lyrics
For no One was the first song that came to my mind before clicking on the video
Because by the Beatles ends on the I diminished
As a musician, I have never heard that Charles Ives piece before... Although at first I was excited to hear the unresovled ending, it left me with such a pit in my stomach... Well played Ives. Well played.
I think you meant, Well composed, Ives 🤣
Ives had that habit with his songs in stretching what was possible then. A genius and early pushing the boundaries composer
I really like the Queen "We Are The Champions" example - it makes the song all the more interesting, giving it both an infinite quality (it's almost like ending there allows it to loop in your mind if that makes any sense, because you can hear "of the worrrrrllllddd" coming on the F chord). But also leaving out both the chord and the final lyric casts a shadow of doubt and mystery over that final line, uncertainty over being a champion in the end - which I find quite interesting. It's worth noting that in the live versions of that song, they would complete the final line and end on the tonic chord. Perhaps leaving it linger for thousands of fans in a stadium would have been overwhelmingly tense! ;)
In my head, the chorus goes back to the top over and over!
@@wyattstevens8574 yeah exactly, it's kind of like a forever loop in the mind, and ending it there seems to encourage that haha
I seem to remember hearing that at first they would end it like the record, but all the fans would sing “of the world” after it, so they decided to start resolving it.
SOOO many IV chord endings in songs
On the 4th beat of a bar:
"Freeze Frame" J. Geils Band; "Sothern Cross" CSN; "Who Can It Be Now" Men at Work; "Faithfully" Journey; "Stay (I Missed You)" Lisa Loeb; "All Star" Smash Mouth; "Rock of Ages" Def Leppard; "You Learn" Alanis Morissette; "Drops of Jupiter" Train; "All of the Stars" Ed Sheeran; "Lotus" REM; "Blinding Lights" The Weeknd
On the 3rd beat of a bar:
"School's Out" Alice Cooper; "Overkill" Men at Work; "Just Like Heaven" The Cure; "Home Sweet Home" Motley Crue; "Wicked Game" Chris Issak
On the 2nd beat of a bar
"Mother" Pink Floyd; "Whip It" Devo; "Beds Are Burning" Midnight Oil; "Cannonball" The Breeders
On the 1st beat of a bar
"This Time" Bryan Adams; "Private Idaho" B-52s
Nearly as many V chord endings
"Sir Duke" Stevie Wonder; "You Shook Me All Night Long" ACDC; "Another One Bites the Dust" Queen; "Middle of the Road" The Pretenders; "99 Luftballons" Nena; "Mr. Jones" Counting Crows; "Sweet Emotion" (outro) Aerosmith; "Synchronicity II" (outro) The Police; "Dream On" Aerosmith; "Moving in Stereo" The Cars; "Possession" Sarah McLachlan
vi/bVI chord endings
"Handy Man" James Taylor; "Don't Get Me Wrong" The Pretenders; "Scar Tissue" Red Hot Chili Peppers; "Just What I Needed" The Cars; "You, Me & the Bourgeoisie" The Submarines
iii/bIII chord endings
"Nobody Home" Pink Floyd; "One (is the loneliest number)" Three Dog Night; "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" Culture Club
ii chord endings:
"Piece of My Heart" Big Brother & Holding Company; "Because" The Beatles (iidim7)
bVII chord endings (see reply to zalditoes633 post)
This playlist in just your average Australian pub band setlist
Can you copy the bVII list here? Love your list, but can’t find good ol’ zaldito.
@@4.0gotestreview16 "Hard Day's Night" The Beatles; "Rebel Rebel" David Bowie; "Beautiful Day" U2; "Hold the Line" Toto, "Rag Doll" Aerosmith, "Building a Mystery" Sarah McLachlan; "Teardrop" Massive Attack
"Drive" - Incubus
wow i know some of these
I tell you what else is unresolved........
What??? 😭
Your inner sense of self
Thrs is the hardest ive laughed in genuinely solong
My mom
@@dominicmoisant8393
*your
These videos instill me with an overpowering urge to plug in my keyboard and investigate the matter myself. Well done!
For how much you love Radiohead I was shocked that Lucky wasn’t an example of ending on the V. It’s the first song I can think of that ends on the V
Brain fart I assume
The last jarring chord of Mozart's Lacrimosa always stood out to me.
Heard an urban legend where a pianist had an awful neighbour…when practicing their scales each day they would deliberately *not* play the final (tonic) note/chord…hour after hour, day after day of getting to VII and….no resolution!
Rumour has it the neighbour left in less than a fortnight! 😊
You are increasing my music theory knowledge one video at a time. Thanks.
"Mother Nature's Son" by The Beatles ends on the tonic but with the dominant seventh added, which doesn't sound quite resolved.
Yeah, I love that resolution. Gives it a little bluesy feel.
reminds me of the ending of chopin's prelude op. 28 no. 23, although that one is arguably resolved to the relative minor in the next prelude
Love Hurts by Nazareth was my high school music teacher's favorite example of this.
So cool. I love that "resolve on the 4" feel. I hear it and it's just, "I like that!"
Bruno Mars’ “Talking To The Moon” ending on the Dominant V7/vi chord with the lyrics “I know you’re somewhere out there, somewhere far away…” is genius 🎉 Giving it a sense of wonder and unresolve 👍
I don’t know if it's just my impression, but it does seem that it was in the mid-1960s that unresolved endings really became a thing in pop music.
Makes sense since the 1960s were a period of massive experimentation in pop music. The sound of mainstream music completely changed between 1964 and 1967, and arguably also between 1967 and 1970.
@@gclip9883 I suspect Jazz being pop music 1 or 2 decades prior is probably that influenced that
@@Atlas65 But even before Jazz though there are many examples in impressionist music (In the Ravel/Debussy era) where it became more common to not resolve anything.
"Canção da América" by the great brazilian singer Milton Nascimento is another example of song that has a non resolving end. The last line says "any day, my friend, we'll meet..." For that this melodic feature fits perfectly.
One of the former Panic at the Disco members had a side project called The Young Veins and their song “Dangerous Blues” ends on an unresolved chord that I think adds to the message of the song (realizing that love isn't “perfect”)
Adia by Sarah McLachlan is in C-minor but she ends on a G-major chord which really gives the song an unresolved feeling since the chord prior is Bb. An interesting use of the vi chord was in differing versions of Goodbye to You by Michelle Branch. The song is in Ab and the album version ends on the Ab flat major tonic, but the single version ends on the Fm (vi) chord. She even changes it up in different live performances.
Dream Sweet in Sea Major by Miracle Musical is my favorite unresolved ending. It gets across the gravity of what's happening without ruining the serenity of the song.
MIRACLE MUSICAL REFERENCED????
Excellent as usual. I like the example of For No One - ending on a V7 sus4 to V7 (I think). What's great about it is the way it matches and enhances the unresolved narrative of the lyrics. Her love has gone but somehow the singer isn't quite yet able to let go.
1:30 I feel like a better resolve for Mr. Brightside would be to let the Ab chord play, and then play the Db right on the 1 of the next bar
100% agree. I was looking through the comments trying to find someone else saying this.
@@AndrewTyberg Glad to hear that, mate!!
first thought was for no-one by the beatles.
that it reflects the content of the song "a love thay should have lasted years" is so good, shows what a great song composer McCartney was
Some songs shouldn’t resolve, that’s something I truly believe in. Resolving a dramatic or emotional song with a boring 1 chord with no extensions can make a song feel corny, and sometimes just letting a piano or guitar ring out on a dissonant chord can turn into a beautiful sound once it’s just the overtones left ringing
A wonderful example for me is 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams'! The ending part, which is already a complete mess in my opinion, suddenly and abruptly ends the F minor song with a quick E5 power chord. Such a weird yet cool ending!
I always disliked that particular Greenday song and really disliked the ending but honestly your comment just made me actually appreciate what they were doing there
It’s a wonderful song and yet it just ends abruptly like that. If I were in Green Day, I would’ve made it resolve at the end
one of my favorite examples, though very obscure, is Lemon Demon’s “Amnesia Was Her Name”, which ends on an extended iii chord
Hell yeah
I wouldn't exactly say "very obscure" but it is a nice song
HELL YEAH, NEIL CICIEREGA
The first song (or songs since there is multiple variations of the song) that came to mind when I thought of a song with no resolution was the song Now or Never from the Splatoon series since it ends on the 7th note after an arpeggio of notes climbing the lydian scale but never reaching the octave
Ah yes, the ending of Now Or Never. Scruffy did a video about that exact quirk of this song a few years ago. Really adds to the tension of how a Turf War can come down to the wire. Case in point the most recent Splatfest, I was playing with some friends and we got a 333x Battle that came down to the wire but what saved us was a teammate using their special last second to paint *just enough* for us to win by 0.5%
This reminded me of The Black Hit from Space by The Human League. It's a song about a cosmic horror trapped in a record unleashing all kinds of surrealistic disasters once it's played and the final line is "It's the hit that's never gone | Time stops when you put it-", then a beat wraps it up, no final chord.
My favourite unresolved ending is Bob Marley's Redemption Song. It's as if Bob was telling us, without words, that we should try to finish his song in real life, to try and find the redemption we haven't found yet as a world.
Two Door Cinema Club's "What You Know" is the one I could recall
The first song I thought of was "Everlong" by Foo Fighters, which ends on a fourth.
The acoustic version ends on the Imaj7 though
"A Trick of the Tail" by Genesis off their album of the same name is a hidden gem in this regard. It ends on a hauntingly beautiful cycle of chords, postponing returning to the I chord forever.
I love writing songs that end in VI Major, instead of minor. 😊
We call it "the Lamb transition" czcams.com/video/tax7ZlWyYvA/video.html
Picardy?
This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us/Sparks, ends on the VIIth chord. Firth of Fifth/Genesis ends on a suspended VIIth. In The Ballad of Lucy Jordan the vocal ends unresolved.
One of my favourite non-tonic endings is ‘Eleventh Earl of Mar’. It’s not very well known (outside of the Prog milieu), but it’s one of the most jarring cadences I’ve ever heard. The song ends with a reprise of its intro and lands on the mediant of its parallel major key, itself a minor chord. It’s a heartbreaking finish.
That Tony Banks was a brainy one
My favorite example of this is Je te laisserai des mots by Patrick Watson. The second-to-last chord actually is a resolution, but then there's an unexpected unresolved chord after it. This unresolved chord sounds like it wants to resolve to the first chord of the song, so you could just play it in a loop.
I love the major sustain at the end of Happy Together by The Turtles
There's a song called "Already Gone", by Two Door Cinema Club, that takes this to the extreme by actively cutting out the ending of the final chorus. It goes "we could've lived together a-" and in the CZcams comments you can see a bunch of people going "does it just end like that???"
It does! I find it quite clever songwriting, too, because the whole song is about a computer's message to the world when the end of the Internet approaches (or something), so the connection gets cut abruptly. Also, of course, the song itself is "already gone"!
I just love throwing an unresolved out of key ending and see my friends giving me the stink eye 😂
A song I learnt just yesterday that appears to be on its way to resolve but makes a rapid turn to finish unresolved is 'Inconsciente Colectivo'. A song that talks about freedom, the end of oppresion and the gift of democracy in a dictatorial country as Argentina was in the early 80's. I think it's a musical metaphor to say: the end of it all is near (the dictatorship ended the following year), but we still have to fight back and resist some time more (the lyrics also reinforce that meaning).
Also, it's a really short song (2mins if you ignore the almost silent coda in the studio version), so go and give it a listen.
Side note: a song that uses the same trick is "Los Dinosaurios", that talks more about the darkness of the period in a more melancholic way, only to finish the song with "they'll dissappear", implying that the dictators who "dissapeared" thousands of people (they were klld and never found) will also end up having what they deserve: punishment. The trials finally happened in 1985, and there's a film nominated to the Academy Award called "Argentina: 1985" that uses Inconsciente Colectivo as its credits song.
Thanks, Long-time listener, first time contributor. I wish you could have taught me music appreciation when I was in grade school. Not a serious musician but I like to know how it works
As always… very thoughtful, interesting and intelligent video.
Good stuff.💪👍🎸
Thank you!
"Seven Days In Sunny June" by Jamiroquai, but it's interesting how in resolves into "Electric Mistress" in the album.
I don’t know what note Michael Crawford ends on in Music of the Night, but I’m 99% sure it’s not the tonic note. I’m 100% sure that it’s staggeringly beautiful. Gives me goosebumps to listen to it.
Within the classic rock realm, you're missing a BIG one with "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago. After the final iteration of the chorus, driving guitar gives way to the final brassy statements from the horn section - culminating in a dissonant, jazzy chord that brings the song to a thrilling conclusion.
another great video that explains everything so well. thanks, david.
5:45
Live and let die is such a good song. But it might be the least James Bond sounding James Bond song of them all. 😂
that's probably what makes it an iconic James Bond theme
I think Lulu’s man with a golden gun should take that title.
Far from it. At least Live and Let Die has that spy-sounding minor key hook (the parts that are in double-time). And it uses some chromaticism in spots. There are other Bond songs that are just straight up pop songs. Check out the Die Another Day theme by Madonna. It's an awful club song that has nothing to do with James Bond.
Probably one of my favorite unresolved endings would be Times Like These by Foo Fighters, ending on the VII chord (C instead of D). Granted that song is already bizarre in typical modern music, but still great.
my favorite example of this is Pushit by TOOL. most of the song is in A minor, but then towards the end it modulates to D minor, and the last riff ends on the flat6 of D minor (Bflat) but in relation to A minor this is a flat2 interval, a lot of dissonance and one of my favorite endings of possibly my favorite TOOL song
One of my favourite unresolved endings is "Learn to Fly" by Foo Fighters. This band uses the unresolved ending quite frequently, but this is a stand-out example. I'm surprised that you unresolved Beatles list didn't include "A Hard Day's Night"...
i was surprised going away to college by blink 182 wasnt mentioned, it's ending is much less resolving at the end than whats my age again, and i think it works super well playing off the rest of the song
I don't think popular music gets to do something older styles of music do, which is to have an ending that sounds like it's going all to hell but suddenly swerves into a very satisfying resolution (the opposite of the Ives example). For example, the Fugue from Louis Vierne's Symphony No. 1 for organ is in D minor. After a cadenza, it twice resolves from B dim7 to E7, then while holding a high D it walks up the pedals from D7/F# to G add2, G add2/A, Gm add2/Bb (super crunchy!), Gm/C# and finally a Dsus4 which turns around a blazing bright D major. I won't link it directly, but "Louis Vierne - Symphonie No.1, Op.14 (Score Video)" around 12:30 is well worth a listen. Loved your video!
Thought for sure you’d do “For No One” but I guess Beatles are still very highly represented 😂
Never thought id see a shania twain song make it in a david bennett video, and im here for it
Great video as always. Typo at 5:15 - Ebm should be bvi I think
@@williamevans4379 well spotted!
I never thought about this and now you’ve cursed me with this knowledge
I love that the Beatles were doing this as early as 1962, in Ask Me Why. And
that Charles Ives anticipated them by 60 years, with his Second Symphony. He really was ahead of his time.
Great video David. Have you listened to the One Hand Clapping version of Live And Let Die? It's very surprising because right after the Ebm at the end they finish with Bb, which I suppose was the intention Paul had when he wrote it, using a minor plagal cadence to the relative major (and I suppose that's why you labelled the Ebm as a iv instead of a bvi?). It's only when l listened to this version that this chord finally made sense to me; but it works so well on taking your mind off the song and into what comes after, which is a film.
Check out The Last Mall by Steely Dan. It’s lack of resolution works perfectly with the lyrics, which is about the end of the world. The song doesn’t resolve, and ends abruptly, like the world. Brilliant.
Songs I'm surprised weren't mentioned in the video or the comments:
Linkin Park - What I've Done, Numb
Foo Fighters - Everlong
Nine Inch Nails - The Hand That Feeds
Chris Cornell - You Know My Name
Mudvayne - Death Blooms (This one being the least resolved ending of the group)
Us And Them, Any Colour You Like and Brain Damage also don’t resolve, but it’s only to transition perfectly between themselves
Not strictly in this context, but you mentioned cinematic, so I will mention the spooky unresolved ending to the Twentieth Century Fox riff at the opening of Alien 3
Je Te Laisseri Des Mots is one of my favorite songs that do this exact thing. It’s truly a wonderfully unique finally that leaves the end of the song up for a kind of speculation.
another one of my favorite songs that doesn't fully resolve at the end is Glimpse of Us by Joji. It's melancholicly beautiful with the addition from the context of the lyrics.
The unresolved Eb7 vividly shows the feeling of missing someone. Even though the song has ended, the pain still lingers in the composer's heart.
Nice one David rolling out the Ives at the end! Love it!
The Beatlesque "Jumping Fences" by The Olivia Tremor Control ends on a minor iv chord, leaving a bittersweet ending to such a sunny song - I always loved the way it ended.
Glimpse of us by Joji is one of my favorite examples of an unresolved chord. The song ends with a V chord, which perfectly describes the feeling of a relationship ending without closure
Subterranean Homesick Alien (by Radiohead) has a weird weird resolution. The song is in the key of G, but at the end it goes
D min | Ab maj | D maj
Good day sunshine, And your bird can sing, For No One just from Revolver. And I found those looking for another song that I'm guessing isn't on that album ...
Bjork-Isobel was the first song to come to mind.
By not containing any Radiohead song, this video feels quite unresolved.
I love the Charles Ives example - having listened to the whole symphony which is pretty straight-forward classical music (by Ives' standards anyway) it really feels like "the most unresolved ending ever"
The Ramones' first couple of albums have quite a few tunes that don't resolve on the tonic: "Judy is a Punk", "Listen to My Heart", "I Remember You"- many others...
I mostly play CCM these days, and there are a good number of songs in that genre that have unresolved endings. The most recent example I've run into is The Commission by Cain, which is especially poignant as the closing line is "Goodbye is not the end.". I've finally gotten my band to accept and even embrace the lack of resolution in many songs.
Arctic Monkeys' Flourescent Adolescent imo is a great example of an unresolved ending
My favourite is Born to Kill by Matthew Good Band. It's the penultimate song and last "loud rock" song on its album. It crescendos into orchestral strings and chaos for a good minute before abruptly switching to a ring out mid-measure to end.
In the song Motorway by Fearofdark, it tricks you at the end into thinking it's not going to resolve, but then the song plays its last few notes and eventually resolves in an extremely satisfying way. Fearofdark songs are always full of surprises.
Really interesting and very helpful! Thanks, David.
This makes me realize I've never focused on resolving my songs before. I just end them in what I think is the best way. I thought all these songs sounded as resolved as they needed to be lol