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Great crescendo songs

The New Neo Posted on by

A little while ago I wrote a post featuring great monotonous songs. Today I’m going to write about great crescendo songs, which consist of either a single crescendo or in some cases a series of crescendos.

A lot of songs have crescendos in them, of course. But in what I’m calling “crescendo songs,” the crescendos seem to me to be more prominent and more central. They can easily slip into self-parody because crescendos can seem gimmicky, but I find them very effective.

Ravel’s “Bolero” is a good example of a non-song crescendo piece of music that many people think is great, but I’ve never cared for it. Go figure.

In honor of the topic, I’ll save my favorite for last.

First up:

The above video is so 80s it’s pretty hysterical, but I still really like the song. If you never saw my post on literal videos, follow the link to find a sidesplitting version.

Next we have this one, which it occurs to me is very apropos for the upcoming Easter holiday:

Another:

And guess what? “Making Love Out of Nothing At All” was written by the same guy as “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

And from the very heart of the 60s we have this song, which is one single big crescendo:

To me, Jacques Brel’s “Amsterdam” is one of the greatest crescendo songs of all time, by one of the greatest singer-songwriters ever. I don’t speak French, but I first heard this song in an English translation and its power still came across. Here the sublimely intense Brel practically spits it out (which is appropriate for the theme):

Here, in what can only count as an anticlimax, is the English translation I first heard. It’s from the Jacques Brel musical “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” which I saw in its original New York incarnation in the late 60s. It’s not Brel himself (what could be?), but it’s still pretty good:

Comments

Great crescendo songs — 56 Comments

  1. A bolero, at least Ravel’s, is a table dance performed solo by a woman for a man or several men. The crescendo matches the increase in tension caused caused by the woman’s seductive dancing. It is one of my favorite pieces of music ever and not just because I was first introduced to it by Bo Derek. Really 😉

  3. The iconic “classic rock” anthems “Stairway to Heaven” and “Free Bird”. Also the Beatles’ “Hey Jude”.

  4. As the French catch-phrase goes “Tout les monde desire le crescendo.”

    “The whole world wants a crescendo.”

  6. Steve:

    Yes, the rhythm part is somewhat similar; not the melody. But I still don’t like Bolero.

  7. Roy Orbison’s “Oh Pretty Woman” was pretty much an exception, not the rule, that more often than not, Roy’s songs are crescendo songs. Here are a few of Roy’s top-tenners that were crescendo songs — in chronological order. (There are many crescendo singles that were not top-tenners, and more that weren’t singles at all, but I’ll spare you. There were also a few that were top-tenners but were not what I’d call crescendo songs, for example, Roy’s “Blue Angel”.)

    By the way, except for “Mean Woman Blues”, all of these were composed or co-composed by Roy Orbison. Also, all these youtube links are of original recordings.

    Roy Orbison, Running Scared, 1961
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC58DYAYCdY

    Roy Orbison, Crying, 1961
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQrgeeS_qbo

    Roy Orbison, In Dreams, 1963
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZuF_ei8nsM

    Roy Orbison, Mean Woman Blues, 1963
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihuurOk6jbU

    Roy Orbison, It’s Over, 1964
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVdG09fQ8Ek

    Roy Orbison, You Got It, 1989
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvR1YgT7QYs

  9. M J R:

    How could I have forgotten “Crying”? One of my favorite crescendo songs.

  11. And I thought the literal Total Eclipse of the Heart and the literal Safety Dance were hysterical.

  19. Well, all my Flash plugins have crashed, As Per Usual.

    And I updated the damn player today. Hasn’t worked right for a year.

  20. Great call pointing out all the Orbison songs that are crescendos . At first I thought “Mean Woman Blues” wouldn’t qualify because it starts out hard rocking but I forgot about the part just before the end where he brings it way down. Shows the kind of artist Orbison was he could make a crescendo song out of a two-minute rocker!

  24. I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Barry Manilow. I am reminded of “Time in New England”, but nearly everything he did was what I consider a crescendo song.

  26. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is IMO a truly great crescendo song, rivaled in the rock canon, only by “Stairway to Heaven”. In that competition, Orbison’s “Crying” takes the bronze medal.

    In the classical canon, “Also Sprach Zarathustra” is probably the quintessential crescendo piece. Personally, I love Ravel’s Bolero, it’s unapologetic sensuality is unsurpassed.

    As I’ve aged, I’ve come to the conclusion that when a lot of people like something that fails to impress me, more often than not, the ‘fault’ in appreciation lies with me, otherwise one must posit a form of stupidity in others.

    As example, I haven’t the genes to appreciate really spicy food, to me it’s just painful but I can’t deny the obvious pleasure that the same food brings others.

  29. Geoffrey Britain:

    Bolero, unapologetic sensuality? I’ve always found that piece of music to be an almost unrelieved snooze. To me, Bolero is a crescendo song but also a monotonous song, and the monotony outweighs every other perception.

    I think for sensuality I’d look to a very different source, Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing,” long version, instrumental part. This is quite a crescendo. The whole performance is great, but the real crescendo starts at 6:28 and last to the very end, over four minutes later. One of the greatest crescendos in rock, and I’d call it sexual rather than sensual. Whatever it is, I’m impressed:

  30. Yancey Ward:

    Simple—I’m not very keen on “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” I don’t hate it; I just don’t really like it.

  33. Laura Nyro’s “Save the Country” should qualify. She had quite a unique musical vocabulary; a fine pianist, vocalist and song writer, her albums “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession” and New York Tendaberry” were way ahead of her age when they were released.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E21KH_YOk7Y

  34. “Bolero, unapologetic sensuality? I’ve always found that piece of music to be an almost unrelieved snooze. To me, Bolero is a crescendo song but also a monotonous song, and the monotony outweighs every other perception.” neo

    Yes neo. Perhaps I should have gone with my first characterization of Bolero as, “unabashed sex for its own sake”, rather than “unapologetic sensuality”. I’ve noticed before that people who don’t ‘get’ Bolero find it monotonous, as do you. That’s not a putdown but an observation. What I find delightfully repetitious, building to a purposely delayed climax, you see as snooze. And that’s OK, in fact Vive la différence!

    Contrastingly, I’ve never ‘gotten’ Leonard Cohen, at least not enough to want to listen to him but I recognize that I must fail to appreciate something that is obvious to you, otherwise all his fans are crazy and tasteless. I find it much more probable that I’m missing something and I respectfully suggest that the same might be true with you and Bolero.

  35. It would have been better to have included ” Eli’s Commin’ ” in the previous submission; it should work as a climax song as well.

    It’s regrettable that the inferior cover by Three Dog Night was more well known than the original; several of Nyro’s other songs had the same fate.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve6PSCUOYvE

  36. I don’t believe anyone has mentioned Meatloaf’s “Bat out of Hell.” Like it or not, it is definitely a crescendo song. Incidentally, it, like a number of Meatloaf’s songs, was written by Jim Steinman, as were the opening and closing songs in the movie Streets of
    Fire.

  37. John:

    I remember that original Laura Nyro album. “Eli’s Comin” was a great song.

  38. Geoffrey Britain:

    Oh, I don’t think anyone’s missing anything in terms of not seeing the truth. Different things appeal to different people—in music, as in art, or literature. I accept that “Bolero” is considered a great piece of music by many people. But not by me. And I certainly wouldn’t expect that everyone would like Leonard Cohen! He’s unusual, and not to every taste. I think people who don’t like him are missing out on a lot, that’s all.

  39. neo,

    I easily accept the proposition that people, such as myself, who find Leonard Cohen not to be ‘their cup of tea’ are missing out on a lot. And that is why I think that when we fail to appreciate what is so appealing to those who do appreciate that artist, song or ‘thing’… we are in fact missing the ‘truth’ of what we find unappealing.

    Different things do indeed appeal to different people–in music, as in art, or literature, that’s a given of the human condition. But a failure to see what the other person finds so appealing is IMO an indication of a limitation in perception.

    Other people ‘get’ what we don’t and again, that’s just part of the human condition. I’m not saying that we ‘ought’ to get it, just that objectively, we’ve ‘bumped up’ against an internal limitation in perception.

    That of course is not a judgement of moral failure just a recognition that we all have limitations. Hopefully and ideally, as we age we grow and expand our limitations in perception.

  40. Geoffrey Britain:

    I disagree. I think that people are sensitive to and like different elements of music or art, and that’s why they prefer certain sorts of music or art and dislike others. For example, I happen to know that in music what I especially like are melody and lyrics (for songs). Rhythm is less important to me, although of course I like it, too. That’s why I don’t like drum solos that much ordinarily. It’s also one of the big reasons I like Leonard Cohen—without the lyrics of Cohen the poet, it wouldn’t be the same at all. Bolero, as a classical piece, doesn’t have lyrics, but for me it lacks melody, and the rhythm is very monotonous as well. That’s why I don’t like it. But I understand that the driving rhythm and the crescendo may be very appealing to some people. I think I understand it; I just don’t share it.

    Other people who don’t like Cohen often say he’s monotonous. I can see why they feel that, because his voice has a droning quality and his melodies are sometimes monotonous. For me, though, the melodies and the harmonies (especially the contrast of the beautiful female voices he usually has in the background with his own low low droning voice) are very beautiful, and then the words are usually extremely moving and poetic. So that’s it for me.

    I don’t think it’s a “missing the truth” of something, either for me or for others—except, I suppose, so far as everyone isn’t going to appreciate everything on earth, and each person has things that appeal to him/her more than other things.

  41. Lots of classical pieces fit the bill. “Pines of Rome” has one of the best in its closing.

  42. While “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is a pleasant enough song, it doesn’t have a particularly effective climax. Part of the problem is what the song tells us bridges over troubled water will do for us — they will lay them down (swell — they were standing before?) and they will also ease our minds (be still my beating heart).

    Musically, in trying to force a BIG CLIMAX where one wasn’t, the producer of the Simon and Garfunkel version ended up resorting to a cannonade drum shot with soaring strings to cover up the fundamental weakness of the musical line.

    Eh, enough about that. It’s nowhere nearly as bad as the awful faux climaxes in “Moon River” (Breakfast at Tiffany’s) or “Somewhere” (West Side Story).

    Here is one more song I’d say qualifies as a climax song, although it’s a subtle one — Tom Waits’ “Ruby’s Arms.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYAiTg8Tdk4

    BTW, Waits has the only version of “Somewhere” that I ever liked (not that that particularly matters).

  43. I love Leonard Cohen as a songwriter, but I hate his voice, and it’s only gotten worse with age–when he was young he was sometimes bearable. Also, some of his musical choices in later years were awful, though that may be the fault of his producers. “Hallelujah” is a beautiful song, but I’d rather listen to anyone other than Cohen sing it. Rufus Wainwright’s version is very good. The same goes for “If it be Your Will”, which the Webb sisters sing beautifully.

    I just realized that the Pixies song “Gouge Away” is pretty much one long crescendo. Here’s the album cut:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMHykYTomdo

    And a live version from the same concert as “Something Against You”:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wHoD8azJ28

    If you don’t like the punky “Something Against You”, you might enjoy this one. I find it hauntingly beautiful.

  44. Glenn – Jim Steinman also wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Making Love out of Nothing at All”. He was great at that kind of buildup song.

    Neo – There was a passage in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that centered on the peak of White Rabbit.

  45. Music Bully:

    Here’s a piece I wrote years ago about Leonard Cohen’s voice—why I used to dislike it, and why I like it very much now.

  46. Neo-neocon,

    Thanks! That’s interesting, since I went the opposite way. I was a major Cohen fan in my teens, and had every album of his up through “Death of a Ladies’ Man”, and even his live one from back then (still have them in a box somewhere). Even then, I didn’t think he was a great singer exactly, but his songs made up for it. He’s written some of his best songs since–“Hallelujah” and “If it be Your Will” most obviously–and I’m glad I’ve discovered them, but I can’t tolerate his singing anymore.

  47. Music Bully:

    Interesting.

    Maybe he’s just finally sunk too low for you to tolerate. 🙂

    I sometimes listen to his songs when sung by other people with much better voices. I have almost never found one I like better than the Cohen rendition. I realize that’s odd, because it’s clear their voices are more pleasant, more musical, etc. But what I hear in Cohen’s voice I don’t hear in the others. Either they are too young (not enough world experience in their voices to carry the weight of the words) or too pretty-pretty or so over-the-top emotional that it sounds fake or neurotic (that latter is what I hear with Wainwright and “Hallelujah”). With Cohen’s own voice, what I hear is a weary wisdom, a great deal of experience, and an appreciation of the beauty and tragedy of life, its solemnity and its humor, crossed with a hint of his sardonic wit and the ability to laugh at himself.

  48. Neo,

    I understand what you mean, though I obviously don’t agree on Wainwright. I never liked Jennifer Warnes’ renditions of Cohen’s songs, especially “Famous Blue Raincoat”, a man’s song if there ever was one! Also, even though I love Judy Collins I never liked her versions of his songs, which are over-produced in that late-’60s way. I also don’t like some of the overdone versions of “Hallelujah”, especially Jeff Buckley’s famous one. Anyway, I understand what you mean even if I don’t feel that way about Cohen himself anymore.

  49. Music Bully:

    I think Warnes has a beautiful voice, but I think her rendition of “Famous Blue Raincoat” is absurd. Why not change the lyrics a bit? It can be done—I once figured out a version that a woman could sing that made sense and still preserved the triangle aspect of the song.

  50. Neo,

    Exactly! If she had to do that one, maybe she could have asked Cohen to rewrite it for her. Anyway, there surely must be better Cohen songs she could have picked.

  53. Nick: Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I was totally aware that Jim Steinman wrote “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” etc. Now, I have a comment about Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” I have listened to many of the covers of the song and mostly enjoyed them, especially Jeff
    Buckley’s. But I have always been baffled by none of the cover songs including the final verse which ends with “And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my breath but Hallelujah!”

  55. Glenn:

    I’ve been puzzled by the omission of that verse too, but I know that even Cohen has put out versions that differ in which verses he decides to use. I once read somewhere that he wrote about 40 more verses during the composing of the song, which spanned quite a while, but threw most of them out.

    Here is my favorite cover version. It’s pretty weird, I know (and then there’s the guy’s name). But to me it’s head and shoulders and way above all the others, except for Cohen’s own, of course:

    Aha! Just found it:

    In a New York Times review of the book, Janet Maslin praises the book and the song, noting that “Cohen spent years struggling with his song ‘Hallelujah.’ He wrote perhaps as many as 80 verses before paring the song down.

    I would dearly love to see those extra 80 verses.

    Cohen wrote around 80 draft verses for “Hallelujah”, with one writing session at the Royalton Hotel in New York where he was reduced to sitting on the floor in his underwear, banging his head on the floor. His original version, as recorded on his Various Positions album, contains several biblical references, most notably evoking the stories of Samson and traitorous Delilah from the Book of Judges (“she cut your hair”) as well as the adulterous King David and Bathsheba (“you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you”).

    Following his original 1984 studio-album version, Cohen performed the original song on his world tour in 1985, but live performances during his 1988 and 1993 tours almost invariably contained a quite different set of lyrics with only the last verse being common to the two versions. Numerous singers mix lyrics from both versions, and occasionally make direct lyric changes, such as Rufus Wainwright, a Canadian-American singer, substituting “holy dark” and Allison Crowe, a Canadian singer-songwriter, substituting “Holy Ghost” for Cohen’s “holy dove”…

    Cale’s version has vocals, piano, and lyrics that Cohen had only performed live. Cale had watched Cohen perform the song and asked Cohen to send him the lyrics. Cohen then faxed Cale fifteen pages of lyrics. Cale claims that he “went through and just picked out the cheeky verses.

  56. Thanks for the link to Popa Chubby. I had never heard of him. I agree with you, that very well might be the best cover of “Hallelujah” I have heard. I was initially drawn to Jeff Buckley’s cover because it was the first time I had ever heard the song. Shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, someone put a video up of a slideshow of photos from the war with the Buckley song in the background. It was very moving. I eventually tracked down the original Cohen version and was not impressed with it at all. His later recordings of it are much better. I think Cohen is one of those performers who has to grow on you.

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