Date: May 17th, 1997, 10:17 PM
Subject: Maybe It Wasn’t the End
You ever considerthat maybe the reason you haven’t experienced a satisfying ending is because none of them were actually endings?
Maybe they were pauses, the ending of a chapter.Gaps between the next unraveling.Or worse—unfinished pages someone else stopped writing before you were done living them.
Movies rush to conclusions because they only have two hours to convince you something mattered.There’s a montage with several things happening at once before they run out of time.Life isn’t like that.
You can’t compare music.It’s like comparing apples with needles.They have nothing in common.Nothing.
A song can hang in the in-between, unresolved, and still leave you feeling like something landed.But endings?Real ones?I don’t think they show up with trumpets or fade-outs.I think sometimes they don’t show up at all.You just notice one day that something’s over because you’ve stopped trying to fix it.
That said ...I get it.Sometimes you just need something to feel like an ending.A final chord.A breath released.A truth spoken that can’t be unsaid.
So here’s a list—not of songs that tie everything up neatly, but ones that give a sense of arrival.A full stop.Or at least a punctuation mark that doesn’t leave you hanging mid-thought.
Top Five Songs That Sound Like Resolution (Even If You’re Still Bleeding):
“Águas De Março”—Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina
It’s a list song, sure.This is like a flood of life’s small details—stones, sticks, a sliver of glass, the plans you made, the things you lost, the sudden ache in your chest when someone leaves.
Somewhere in the repetition, it begins to shift.The song holds up object after object, moment after moment, until it stops feeling like noise and starts becoming ...something else.A surrender.A quiet nod to the randomness of it all.
It says: This is what life is.This chaos of meaning and meaninglessness.This pile of fragments that somehow adds up to you.
If you don’t speak Portuguese, it doesn’t matter.The melody does the heavy lifting.It bounces, bright and airy, deceptively simple—like a smile that knows more than it says.
There’s something almost annoyingly cheerful about it at first, like the soundtrack to a spring morning.But as it rolls forward, you realize the song isn’t naive.It knows what it’s saying.
Elis Regina’s voice carries the whole thing with this looseness that feels unscripted—like she’s trying to hold back laughter or maybe tears.It’s the sound of someone who has lived through things and finally stopped trying to organize them into a story that makes sense.Jobim’s voice, by contrast, is almost resigned, as if he’s seen every single item on that list before and quietly accepted them.
Together, their back-and-forth isn’t just musical.It’s existential.Two voices cataloging being alive—without judgment.By the end, you don’t get a conclusion.You don’t even get a chorus.You just get this wave of understanding that this is it.All of it.The mundane, the sublime, the heartbreak, the joy.
It’s a song that hands you the pieces and lets you decide whether you want to build a story—or just let them sit in your palm for a while and breathe.
“In My Life”—The Beatles
I know we avoid the Beatles—yes, I’ve noticed—but this one’s different.This song is just someone looking back, tallying the losses and loves, and choosing—despite it all—to hold onto the good.That’s rare.
“It Doesn’t Matter Anymore”—Buddy Holly
A short goodbye with no malice.It’s not angry.Buddy sings it like he means it.And sometimes, that’s the most satisfying kind of ending.
“These Days”—Jackson Browne
It’s melancholy, yeah—but it’s also peaceful in its weariness.Like someone who’s stopped fighting their past and started living around it instead.Every line sounds like someone who’s felt everything and still gets up anyway.
“A Little Respect”—Erasure
Underneath the glittering pop surface is a raw, aching plea for something so basic it’s almost devastating: respect.
What makes this song feel like resolution isn’t that it offers answers—it’s that it finally asks the right questions.It’s desperate in places, yes, but it’s also resolute.
There’s courage in that vulnerability.
Andy Bell sings like someone whose voice has cracked before, who’s been humiliated, who’s bent as low as love can take you.But he still opens his mouth and asks for more—not because he’s naïve, but because he refuses to be cynical.
