File this under “things I assumed everyone knew but of course they don’t,” which becomes more of a thing the older you get. Some songs don’t really have an ending, they just fade out while the artist repeats the chorus. I did not know that the fade out ending is rarely used these days. Taylor Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department uses this technique, and some Swifties think it’s a new thing. It used to be very common.
The fade out was not because the musicians didn’t know how to end a song. They certainly do, as they make most of their money from live performances. In its heyday, the fade out was used for singles only; songs on an album rarely faded out before The Tortured Poets Department. However, the fade out has been performed live, in several instances before the advent of recorded music. Read about these historic performances and the modern use of the fade out at Mental Floss.
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Source: neatorama