An Album a Day: Swan Songs
Featuring Janis Joplin, Juice WRLD, Ella Fitzgerald, and others
My friend Ken and I decided to listen to an album every day this year. Each week is themed. At the end of each week, we rank what we listened to. To be clear, we aren’t ranking every album that fits the theme. We are only ranking what we chose to listen to during the last seven days.
This week’s theme is “swan songs,” meaning an artist’s final album. While this is a relatively straightforward theme, we had to set up a few rules:
The artist must be dead: In 2014, LCD Soundsystem released The Long Goodbye, a live recording of their final concert ever. Naturally, they reunited a few years later and released an album. We decided the only way to assure an album was actually final was if the artist was dead.
The album must have been completed while the artist was alive: In 2014, the Michael Jackson estate released Xscape from the late pop star. While The King of Pop had worked on many of the tracks during his lifetime, he did not oversee the creation and completion of this album. We aren’t interested in this. We want an artist’s true last effort that they oversaw from beginning to end.
The album must have been released reasonably close to when it was recorded: In 2021, Prince released Welcome 2 America, his 40th studio album. The problem? He’d been dead for 5 years. Though Welcome 2 America was completed during his lifetime, it was shelved for a decade. While we had no inherent aversion to posthumous albums for this theme, we wanted to make sure that the records we were listening to reflected the artist at the end of their life. By this rule, we could have listened to The Notorious B.I.G.’s posthumous Life After Death. When he was murdered, he was already doing press for the record.
Under these guidelines, albums generally fell into one of two categories. First, albums released when an artist was aware that they were near the end of their life. Second, albums released not long before an artist died unexpectedly. Our selections fell pretty evenly across this divide.
#8 All That Jazz by Ella Fitzgerald (1990 - Artist Age: 73)
Had you never heard anything else Ella Fitzgerald ever sang, you’d think this was one of the great vocal jazz albums of all time. But you have heard Ella Fitzgerald sing other songs. While she sounds very good for someone in their seventh decade, this isn’t an album you would like return to, especially since she was re-recording many songs she’d already sang.
I can’t imagine, for example, many people preferring this album’s rendition of “Dream A Little Dream Of Me” when she already done so with both Louis Armstrong and Count Basie decades earlier.
#7 Hypnotic Eye by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (2014 - Artist Age: 63)
While this is, as Ken noted, “a good record to hang your hat on,” it suffers from the same malady of All That Jazz. You know what Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sound like at their best. Still, there are some nice riffs (e.g., “All You Can Carry”), but I think those are overshadowed by retreading some overdone rock rhythms (e.g., “What’d I Say” by Ray Charles → “Fault Lines,” “Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley → “Forgotten Men”).
#6 Expression by John Coltrane (1967 - Artist Age: 40)
As he was battling terminal liver cancer, John Coltrane decided to record one final album, Expression. I was admittedly a bit out of my depth with this record, but it seems like a continuation of ideas that the Coltrane had been exploring at least since A Love Supreme. Expression is a bit more impenetrable than A Love Supreme, though.
#5 Death Race for Love by Juice WRLD (2019 - Artist Age: 20)
Before his unexpected death, Juice WRLD was on the verge of being one of the biggest stars of his generation. And there was good reason for that. He was bursting with ideas, Death Race for Love packed with more memorable hooks than many could create in a lifetime. There is one problem, though. Like many albums of the streaming era, it is too long. Cut the track list in half, and his combination of woozy rhymes with emo aesthetics would hit even harder.
#4 The Wind by Warren Zevon (2003 - Artist Age: 56)
When Warren Zevon made his last appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, the talk show host asked the songwriter how his terminal diagnosis had shaped his life. “You put more value in every minute,” Zevon noted. “It’s more valuable now. You’re reminded to enjoy every sandwich.”
This attitude is apparent on Zevon’s final record, The Wind. You get playful songs, like “The Rest of the Night,” paired with devastating numbers, like “Keep Me in Your Heart.” Few could combine wry wit with sincerity so easily.
#3 Pearl by Janis Joplin (1971 - Artist Age: 27)
Listening to Pearl made me very upset. I wasn’t upset because the album was bad, though. I was upset because it was so good. Janis Joplin had assembled a band that matched her vocal skills. They had selected the perfect songs to suit her skills. And just months before the album was released, the singer was dead, another member of the tragically, mythic 27 Club. I don’t think any other album forces me to ask, “What could have been?” more.
