Two-Parters: the Art of Perfectly Matched Back-to-Back Songs

2022-07-19

The Album is an art. Making great music is an art, sure. But making great music that is improved by the music around it, telling a story, creating an experience beyond one single track… that's hiiiiigh art.

I'm an album listener before I'm a song listener or a playlist listener. I love to hear the layers within an entire album: the recurring motifs (both lyrical and auditory), the energy that's brought from one track to the next, and the journey the listener takes across a well-crafted album. Great albums use each track to improve the experience for every other track. You get more out of listening to everything together, as opposed to just listening to one song on a playlist (of course, this same logic applies to truly great playlists/mixtapes, but that's for another time).

One of my favorite albums of all-time is my example for how a great album works: Father John Misty's I Love You, Honeybear is art. But man, I did not care about its release at the time. The lead single — for whatever reason — was "Bored in the USA", a pointed, sarcastic ballad about the fictitiousness of love and soulmates. It was the first song I heard by Father John Misty and I didn't understand it at all. The cynical lyrics, the overlayed laugh track… it all made no sense to me. I would turn it off when it came on the radio.

Then, the album came out and I saw it on some year-ending Best Of lists. So I gave it a shot. Listening to that song in the context of the album completely changes the experience. It's the crux of the album, it's FJM's emotional moment where he tees up an epiphany about love and the listener learns what the album was even about. This track makes the album. Without this song, which sucked as a single, the album wouldn't be a coherent piece of art — it would merely be a collection of very good songs.

But, I digress. The point isn't that ILYH is an amazing album. The point is that separate tracks back-to-back on an album can uplift each other, creating a better experience than each song is separately. When it works, it's magic. Take your pick for the metaphor here: track one sets you up, track two knocks you down. Track one tees up track two. These tracks are like cheese and wine: amazing on their own but even better together.

Some of my favorite, most memorable music follows this pattern. Two tracks that are so in sync that I go out of my way to listen to them together. In these situations I've been conditioned to expect the second song after the first — if I hear one song played without the other it just feels wrong.

These are the best examples of this that come to mind. Of course, this is based off my music taste so it's unfortunately heavy on 2010s indie rock.

My Favorite Back-to-Back Tracks

The Soft Season / Opener

Microshift (2018) — Hookworms

This is my favorite example of this phenomenon and includes one of my favorite songs of all-time (on one of my favorite albums to boot).

The Soft Season plays like a long intro to Opener, building tension for four minutes. I turn up the volume and listen closer. The first track smoothly transitions to Opener, which has its own slow, building, fascinating intro. When the opener to Opener finally resolves at 3:04 we're over seven minutes into this back-to-back set, and it's all worth it.

A long, long intro like this isn't exactly easy listening but it's extremely satisfying. You forget that the music hasn't had a break in forever and it's just been continuous movement on movement. It's engrossing. It gets me every time.

And I Remember Every Kiss / Sipping On the Sweet Nectar

Night Falls Over Kortedala (2007) — Jens Lekman

Jens Lekman is cheesy as can be but incredibly endearing. The first two tracks here are quintessential Jens — crooning about the importance of affection and almost regretting that he takes part in it, because it ends.

These tracks open this album and set the stage for the sentimental storytelling ahead. They transition smoothly from one to the next and feel like one track, with perfect thematic connection and callbacks between the two. They're perfect and even better together.

Intro / Chaos Space Marine

Ants From Up There (2022) — Black Country, New Road

A lot of the pairs of songs on this list are the first two tracks on their album. Part of that is probably that it's the easiest place to have strong thematic cohesion. The album hasn't split in a million directions yet.

Intro is simply what it is — a minute-long, vocal-free intro to begin the album — and Chaos Space Marine contains its own intro. The theme connecting these two tracks, if nothing else, is explaining to the listener what they're listening to.

Intro crams intense, immersive textures into a tight 54 seconds, taking the role of a musical prologue: this is what you're in for, listener. When Chaos Space Marine starts, we're not done being oriented: all 6 musicians in the band get a few bars to introduce themselves. It pairs incredibly nicely with Intro. You're left curious, intrigued, ready to immerse yourself in the album.

Never Had a Dream Come True / We Can Work It Out

Signed, Sealed, Delivered (1970) — Stevie Wonder

This one could be a three-parter, as these two gems are followed by Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours). But either way, we'll take this. Never Had a Dream Come True is underrated. Some of the best lyrics on any Stevie Wonder song are right here.

The reason these tracks pair so well together, like a lot of these pairs, is in the transition. You're pulled into the lyrics and tender vocals in track one, listening close, and then pop, everything changes. Stevie's cover of We Can Work It Out is one of the best covers ever, in my opinion, even from an era and label known for churning them out.

Above all, I'm just conditioned to expect these songs together. Each needs the other. It feels wrong otherwise.

Holy Shit / I Went to the Store One Day

I Love You, Honeybear (2015) — Father John Misty

It's hard to get the full effect of these tracks without the whole album (see above). They're the last two tracks. Either way, they enhance each other.

These comprise the lesson-learning epiphany on this epic of an album. FJM believes in the front of his mind that it's all bullshit, there's no purpose in life, it's bleak, it's brief, love isn't real. "So I've heard, but what's that gotta do with this black hole in me?" he wonders, knowing he still wants that love even if he feels conned for having been sold the concept.

Then, he finds it. Nothing else matters. Who cares about all the rest, who cares that it's all bullshit, that it's all brief and bleak. "What's that got to do with you and me?" he rhetorically asks, before telling the beginning of his unlikely love story.

Each of these tracks is extremely good. But together, they teach something. They're one of the best moments in any of the music I've ever listened to. I know that's high praise.

Norwegian Wood / You Won't See Me

Rubber Soul (1965) — The Beatles

The Beatles basically invented this concept when they invented the concept album. Sgt. Peppers I into With A Little Help From My Friends is a classic two-parter. But before that, they put two songs back to back that, for whatever reason, my brain simply attached to. I'll get these songs stuck in my head — as a pair — on a regular basis. Who knows why. It wasn't intended.

As an aside, one of their most maligned songs from the White Album, Wild Honey Pie, is part of an excellent two-parter. That chaotic little track, nearly unlistenable, is the perfect setup for Bungalow Bill. It makes it better. Some people would take that song off the White Album but it'd be worse off.

Ultralight Beam / Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. I

The Life of Pablo (2016) — Kanye West

It's hard to explain why Kanye's music does what it does. When he's in control, he's incredibly in control. He's precise. He tugs on your heartstrings and you don't even know how or why — it's not like the lyrics in Ultralight Beam even make that much sense, to be honest.

When I say a lot of these pairs are stuck in my head as a pair and I'm conditioned to expect them together, this is one of the examples that I know is true for a million others. Everyone knows Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. I comes after Ultralight Beam. They're just a pair.

A-Punk / Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

Vampire Weekend (2007) — Vampire Weekend

VW changed indie rock, for better or worse, with this album. It was so weird but made so much sense. It was insanely New England-preppy but built off world and African music. These are the two tracks that radiate that vibe the strongest, and probably their two best known to this day. Gems, and they belong back-to-back, as they are.

Shoutout to their most recent album, Father of the Bride, for nailing the two-parter over and over. To name a few: Bambina and This Life, Sunflower and Flower Moon, and of course, the aptly named We Belong Together and Strangers.

Genesis / Let There Be Light

Cross (2007) — Justice

You don't need to look much past the track names to know they'll feel connected.

Genesis took what Daft Punk was doing and turned it up five notches, laying a blueprint for a lot of the electronic indie music that came in the decade after 2007. Once this sound was born, well, Let There Be Light! Let's see what we can do with this.

This album had impact. And you knew it would have impact from five minutes in, thanks to these two tracks.

If I Was a Folkstar / Colours

Wildflower (2016) — The Avalanches

I could go on and on about this album as a whole and one of its best moments is the transition between these two songs. It's a masterclass in using sound to place your listener in an environment. I have to think everyone imagines themselves in the same place, on a sunny hillside in a parked car, listening to the radio.

If I Was a Folkstar is deconstructed into its original sample like you're waking up from a dream, and you feel the weight of this moment that you're in on that sunny hillside, quietly alone but also sharing the moment with everyone else who has ever listened to this. Soak it in, look at all the colours.

Honorable Mentions