With A Little Help From My Friends: 5 Songs Where Group Vocals Show Up At The End
This week's songs are from Waxahatchee, Hamilton Leithauser, Beyoncé, Jay Reatard, and Fucked Up.
RIP Bob Weir
Oddly enough, I was on Reddit Friday evening looking for any rumors as to whether Dead & Company were going to be playing at the Sphere in 2026. One commentor had it on good authority that Weir hadn’t been in good health. Unfortunately, that turned out to be accurate, but old information. He passed away Saturday.
Weir was out in front, with a guitar, often singing. He supplied the often hilarious stage banter between songs. Whether in taking the mantle from Garcia as the figurehead for the band, or having to play in between Lesh and Garcia, Weir threaded the needle with humility, always focused on the music first. Musicians were effusive in praise for the way he composed songs (incorporating non-Western rhythms), his style of guitar playing (born from studying jazz pianists McCoy Tyner and Bill Evans more than other guitarists), and especially his welcoming and generally positive demeanor. I would only add that nobody else can pull off shorts on stage like Bob Weir.
“Sometimes I think of myself as a brass section or a string section. When I’m onstage playing, I’m not really conscious of the guitar. I’m conscious of the notes and the sound and the demands of the music. And I’m trying to most aptly supply what the music needs in terms of sounds, textures, and harmonic development.” - Bob Weir
The Grateful Dead - “TBC”
I’ve done a full entry on the Grateful Dead, and am open to more should Grateful Dead Season strike in the right way this summer. So I’ll keep this tribute to a single song. Given his subtle guitar style, when I think of Bob Weir, it’s the phrasing in his singing. His voice was fairly pedestrian and there’s so much charm in that. He sounded like a regular guy jamming with his buddies—an almost intentional low bar to encourage others to sing along. There’s so much charm in that. He sang a lot of story songs, adopting a character (“El Paso,” “Me & My Uncle”), but on “Estimated Prophet” he’s fully taking on the role. Like his part in “Truckin’” the vocal is less about melody and more about changes in cadence and moving in and out of synch with the beat. I also love how the “No, no, no”s sound simultaneously defiant and resigned.
One of my favorite albums from 2024 and another from 2025 use a small trick in the structure of a song to create an emotional moment. The trick works on the recording, but also enhances the live performance experience, because there’s little doubt the crowd will join in.
What is the trick? A big chorus with group vocals shows up in the last third of the song.
There are a lot of examples of this (like “Hey Jude”), which will hopefully jump out at you in passing—share them! The group vocals showing up creates a different effect depending on how it’s used in the song, so I’ve pulled a variety of different ways it’s used.
Here are 5 songs where group vocals show up at the end.
““If I was trying to give you a quick pitch on this record, you would be like, ‘That sounds fucking boring.’ But I’m on a lifelong mission to be extremely present with the current age I’m at, whatever place in my life I’m at, and just write about those things, even if they might seem a little mundane on the outside.” - Katie Crutchfield
Waxahatchee - “Tiger’s Blood”
This is the song that got me thinking about the theme—the title track from Waxahatchee’s 2024 album. The thing about Tiger’s Blood is that the instrumentation is pretty basic, so is the production (both by design) and it’s got a few clunkers on it. Out-of-synch relationships are a through-line subject to many of the songs on the record. Katie Crutchfield has mentioned relationships (past and present), codependency, and ending friendships all factored into her writing, so there are a range of characters and specific subjects shaping these songs. On a number of them, collaborator MJ Lenderman’s voice is there to embody that other side of the relationship, most obviously in the lead single “Right Back To It.”
On “Tiger’s Blood,” the last song on the record, Crutchfield and Lenderman duet again, singing a series of vivid images and shared memories. When the second and final chorus arrives, the two are joined by the group vocals that emerge with “the smell of dust that creeps up from the cracks in the floor.” The effect is almost like an arrangement from a stage musical. All of the characters Crutchfield has sung about (or to) throughout the album come together in unison. They might not get to share their side of events, but together they voice a universal truth about any relationship:
And I held it like a penny I found
It might bring me something, it might weigh me down
That all of this plays out over an Oroborus chords progression, we instinctively feel that this dynamic is perpetual. The pennies will be used, discarded, taken, spent, given up. But more will come along. Ultimately, it’s such a strong moment that it makes me want to experience the whole thing all over again, so you start the album back from the top, and on it goes. The cycle repeats.
“Sometimes when I see what I consider to be things barreling in the wrong direction, I feel totally helpless. But I am an optimist, and while I might not have any grand solutions (yet!), no matter what happens, as long as I’m breathing, I can still sing ‘I just want you to love me the way I love you.’ I don’t know if that’s a lot or a little, but I do know it’s true.” - Hamilton Leithauser
Hamilton Leithauser - “This Side of the Island”
When introducing 2024’s This Side of the Island, Hamilton Leithauser described it’s decade-long gestational period. But the title track was the last one he wrote. He uses the history of Lower Manhattan—the foundation of which is garbage, rubble, and landfill—as an extended metaphor for a one-sided relationship, his feelings about New York City, and ultimately the current state of the country. It doesn’t sound like a very optimistic subject or idea, but the song gets you there. The song materializes faintly, adding elements like bass and drums as it unfolds. Ultimately, it’s the gang vocals—a communal expression of hope that seems pretty basic, but we all know is often harder to achieve on an individual basis, but especially on a collective level:
“I just want you to love me the way I love you.”
“This ain't a Country album. This is a 'Beyoncé' album." - Beyoncé
Beyoncé ft. Willie Jones - “Just For Fun”
Calling Cowboy Carter a “Country Album” is somewhat inaccurate, and I don’t say that like some reactionary purist. Rather, I think it’s much weirder and more interesting, so the label is a bit reductive. “Just For Fun” sounds like more of campfire Gospel song with a number of opposing ideas at work. The most obvious dissonance is the title not matching the subject of the song, which is a prayer for resilience. The singer is “going down South just for fun,” which for a Black person carries a lot of historical baggage (side note: For those interested, I recommend this discussion from a Houston local news series one of their producers created around the history embedded in Cowboy Carter). There’s also juxtapositions of gender, time, certainty, fame, darkness and light, declarations of “I don’t need anything,” but resorting to prayer and needing “to get through this”—so many to unpack! But for the purposes of the theme, the dissonance I’m most interested is musical. As noted above, the song is a prayer for resilience as one person prepares for a journey; something they are doing to calm themselves before going to sleep—a personal private moment. Another person—singer Willie Jones—has the same thoughts and wishes. The presence of group vocals here sound like the answer to the prayer, a conjuring of spirits. Or they could be collective participation, honoring the many who had similar experiences, concerns, and journeys, or the person’s core community, joining in as a show of support. The instrumentation is light. There are strings deep in the mix for a moment, but it’s mostly quiet piano, a single guitar, and percussion driven by stomps and claps, someone playing the spoons, and in a nod to Dolly Parton, Beyoncé apparently plays her fingernails too.
“Everyone had been telling me that if I wanted to play guitar, I needed to listen to the Ramones. I bought a copy of Ramones Mania on CD, but it sounded too together, too intimidating, and too professional. I heard the Oblivians, and they sounded drunk and out-of-tune. The first thought that went through my head was, wow—this is completely achievable! I can do this!” - Jay Reatard
Jay Reatard - “Wounded”
James Lee Lindsey grew up dirt-ass poor, in a series of broken homes, and full of energy and a love for music. Lacking money for instruments, he would record himself making songs using a bucket for drums. He took cues from the Ramones, but also the more local Oblivians. Like those bands, he adopted the last name from his first band and from then on was Jay Reatard (ree-AY-tard, if that makes any difference…not sure it does). He was prolific, putting out singles, EPs, LPs under the Reatards, Jay Reatard, the Lost Sounds, Nervous Patterns, the Final Solutions, Terror Visions, and many others. Also like the Ramones he played fast and tight, sang playfully juvenile vocals—it was about energy and attitude and little else. As many people that have incredible things to say about him, he was also an emotionally unstable, often violent drug addict. Just a few months after Watch Me Fall was released, Jay was found dead in his bed at the age of 29. Strange fact: his grave is next to Isaac Hayes’ in Memphis’ Memorial Park cemetery.
“Wounded” finds Jay at his most playful and accessible, but his whole je ne sais quoi is still on full display. Barking lyrics in a mix of weird voices and a rushing pace. Listening to “Wounded” in real time, it’s hard to believe how much is packed into 2 minutes and 34 seconds. The song even falls apart at one point before reassembling itself into a rising anthem weaving together gang vocals (layers of Jay’s various voices) on the celebratory “ba-da dot-da dot-da-das” over a repeating line. He’s saying nothing and it makes no sense how or why this song makes me as happy as it does. There’s a cool demo of this song that’s a bit slower, but still has layers of vocals. Yet the ending doesn’t have the “ba-da dot-da dot-da-das,” instead at various points the instruments drop out, his vocals sing lines in a round. It’s cool, but it doesn’t have the elevation of the official version.
“Youthful exuberance can lead to rashness. In my rush to embrace punk, I ended up throwing out a lot of culture that I was thankfully able to rediscover later. Of all these bands, there are none I am more grateful to have awoken to the greatness of than the Tragically Hip.” - Damian Abraham
Fucked Up - “The Art of Patrons”
I may have said this before but Fucked Up are one of the great, innovative punk bands of our times. It’s interesting for a band to be this ambitious given they named themselves Fucked Up to purposefully limit their ambitions. After delivering waves of $1,000 riffs on their Punk Rock Opera double-album masterpiece David Comes to Life, with the follow up Glass Boys they focused on the drums. They double tracked the drums, recording the songs at two different tempos and mixing them together. It’s why they sound huge, but also a little behind the beat at the same time. The band would ultimately release the full album as a “Slow Version” as a tribute to the difficult recording process they put drummer Jonah Falco through.
But we’re here for “The Art of Patrons” to get to the big vocals that come in at the end. They’re joined by none other than Canadian Rock Royalty Gord Downey of the beloved Tragically Hip. Lead singer Damian Abraham recounted his journey from Hip-hating punk to having Downey as a customer at the video store he worked at, to meeting him backstage and growing to love the man and his band in a piece for Vice. It’s an arch of getting old many of us know—age tends to bring people around eventually. In the piece, Abraham tells of performing the song with Downey at a festival and vowing to never do it again without him—only to later hear of Downey’s illness. It’s the audience’s loss that the band retired it, because like all of the songs on this list, the big gang vocal at the end is a great way to bring people together, to rally around a shared idea. In this case, Abraham wonders if manufacturing a moment like that is compromising his ideals:
What was sacrosanct
Now the sacred is profane
We yearn for the thanks
But deserve all the blame
A simple piece of stagecraft
A tawdry parlor trick
We traded our moral ground so they could sing along
He’s struggling with the whole trick we’re talking about! And Downey is there to cut Abraham down to size—he dismisses the audience as an arbiter of credibility and artistic integrity, but also reminds Abraham that he’s lucky to have one in the first place—with layers of his vocals singing a single line 4 or 5 different ways:
That’s the privilege of mass delusion
Full playlists of songs featured in 5 Songs: