Closing Time (Semisonic song)
| "Closing Time" | ||||||||||
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| Single by Semisonic | ||||||||||
| from the album Feeling Strangely Fine | ||||||||||
| Released | March 10, 1998 | |||||||||
| Format | CD | |||||||||
| Recorded | mid-1997 | |||||||||
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| Length | 4:33 (album version) 3:49 (single version) |
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| Label | MCA | |||||||||
| Writer(s) | Dan Wilson | |||||||||
| Producer(s) | Nick Launay | |||||||||
| Semisonic singles chronology | ||||||||||
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"Closing Time" is a song by American rock band Semisonic. It was released in March 1998 as the lead single from their album Feeling Strangely Fine. Their signature song, it was written by Dan Wilson and produced by Nick Launay. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song in 1999. It reached #1 on Modern Rock Tracks.
The song is about people leaving a bar at closing time. Jacob Slichter has also indicated that the song was written by Wilson "in anticipation of fatherhood" and that it is about "being sent forth from the womb as if by a bouncer clearing out a bar."
Prior to Closing Time, Semisonic would usually end their concerts with the song "If I Run". However, the band eventually grew tired of playing this song every night and so Wilson set out to write a new song that they could play at the end of their set. Wilson's girlfriend was pregnant at the time and although Wilson did not set out consciously to write a song about giving birth, he has stated that "Part way into the writing of the song, I realized it was also about being born."
The music video was directed by Chris Applebaum. It features two continuous shots, running side by side on the screen. One side shows the band playing the song in a rehearsal space. The other side features a woman (played by Denise Franco) as the singer Dan Wilson's girlfriend. As the video progresses, Dan and his girlfriend switch sides of screen, as they attempt to meet up. At the end of the video, they both wind up at the same nightclub. However, they still end up missing each other by mere seconds and never meet. The "trick" of the video is that each shot was done as one long, continuous shot, with no cuts or editing, and therefore relies on proper timing to get the two sides of the video lined up properly.
"Closing Time" was the final song in the polka medley "Polka Power!" on "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1999 album Running With Scissors.
"Closing Time" has been featured in a number of films and television series in the years following its release. In an article about the song's oddly enduring legacy and its use to punctuate comedic scenes, songwriter Dan Wilson believed the song had become "shorthand for that interesting feeling when you realize someone very different from you shares your cultural background" and that it is a song many people know but not everyone likes.
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