Generally I prefer a good fade and the Beach Boys were masters at creating really memorable ones that often deviated from the rest of the song: Custom Machine, Lonely Sea, Funky Pretty, Celebrate The News, Til I Die, Surf's Up (obviously), Airplane, even Lines.

P.S. Not one single Nirvana song ends with a fade, fact fans!!

Really, that's interesting, perhaps fades aren't "grunge" or something?

In Ian MacDonald's book 'Revolution in the Head' he claims that The Beatles deliberately avoided fade-out endings (especially on their early records). However, when thinking about endings I realised that 'Our Prayer' and 'Girl Don't Tell Me' were the only BB songs I could immediately think of that don't fade out, any reason why Brian/the band used Fade-Outs so often?

Sorry, I know it's a pretty off the wall question

Brian nearly always let takes "break down" (both instrumentally and vocally) and never seemed to have any desire for the group or the studio musicians he worked with to create a cold ending.

IMO Girl Don't Tell Me is a nod to The Beatles. It is a very slight musical rewrite of Ticket To Ride and one of the few BB songs (besides the Party! album) to feature an acoustic guitar, overall the production is very Beatley.  The cold ending was probably deliberately done to sound more like a Beatles song.

Thank for your input! In my opinion it's a shame in some cases because some songs would sound fantastic with an interesting vocal flourish to end (Ballad of Ol' Betsy comes to mind) And yes, Girl Don't Tell Me is a great little nod to The Beatles

In Ian MacDonald's book 'Revolution in the Head' he claims that The Beatles deliberately avoided fade-out endings (especially on their early records). However, when thinking about endings I realised that 'Our Prayer' and 'Girl Don't Tell Me' were the only BB songs I could immediately think of that don't fade out, any reason why Brian/the band used Fade-Outs so often?

Sorry, I know it's a pretty off the wall question

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