I once saw a Vox video on this and then I found an article that covers the same thing:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-little-bit-softer-now-a-little-bit-softer-now
I haven't really kept up with mainstream music but I think I can understand why (although some of the songs I love do use fade-outs). It's generally something I don't pay attention to but I could argue that it's a symptom of how our music's being grossly oversimplified - it's not a bad thing and I do like that music is becoming less elitist, but most of my complaints with 2010s music is the rather random melody they use (including music from Sam Smith and Adele, the few mainstream 2010s artists who use melody to create songs that sound enjoyable). I just don't get the taste of 2010s music.

Back in the day there was a great divide between stars and the public. All you knew was what was doctored for albums, radio, videos. Unless you had the fortune of seeing a concert you never got to see their real selves. And of course songs had to have endings created when being played live, among other compromises. It never seemed right when performers would try to follow a fade out when lip syncing on bandstand, heehaw, etc. A fade out was sort of magical but at the same time it was fake.

Nowadays that divide is not nearly as great and it’s not hard to find live footage of stars, and you can follow them online being regular people and sometimes even connect with them. There’s no magic anymore, everything is real. There’s no point in doing fade outs anymore. Songs have endings because that’s what’s real. Now there are still tricks like auto tune and stuff to make people sound better, but these days almost anyone can make an album in their bedroom.

Back in the day there was a great divide between stars and the public. All you knew was what was doctored for albums, radio, videos. Unless you had the fortune of seeing a concert you never got to see their real selves. And of course songs had to have endings created when being played live, among other compromises. It never seemed right when performers would try to follow a fade out when lip syncing on bandstand, heehaw, etc. A fade out was sort of magical but at the same time it was fake.

Nowadays that divide is not nearly as great and it’s not hard to find live footage of stars, and you can follow them online being regular people and sometimes even connect with them. There’s no magic anymore, everything is real. There’s no point in doing fade outs anymore. Songs have endings because that’s what’s real. Now there are still tricks like auto tune and stuff to make people sound better, but these days almost anyone can make an album in their bedroom.
I don't know how long complaints about fade outs have been but I guess people slowly got to the point of thinking it was a cop-out. The article states it was a 90s thing when achieving closure became more of a thing; I think it's more a binary way of thinking that's being pushed forward, there's either got to be sound or no sound, which kind of coincides with how music is just getting louder and overall simpler with little variation in volume too.

Back in the day there was a great divide between stars and the public. All you knew was what was doctored for albums, radio, videos. Unless you had the fortune of seeing a concert you never got to see their real selves. And of course songs had to have endings created when being played live, among other compromises. It never seemed right when performers would try to follow a fade out when lip syncing on bandstand, heehaw, etc. A fade out was sort of magical but at the same time it was fake.

Nowadays that divide is not nearly as great and it’s not hard to find live footage of stars, and you can follow them online being regular people and sometimes even connect with them. There’s no magic anymore, everything is real. There’s no point in doing fade outs anymore. Songs have endings because that’s what’s real. Now there are still tricks like auto tune and stuff to make people sound better, but these days almost anyone can make an album in their bedroom.


Your comments are right on target. It was always silly on mid century variety shows and the like when lip-syncing performers would try to gloss over the fade at the end of the song as the audience applause (cued by an applause sign or actually "sweetened" with an "applause track" later) would begin.

Fades themselves were/are often very necessary parts of the arrangement and sound great when done right, as they pretty much always were in the 60s and 70s. For example, the fade on that long chant at the end of "Hey Jude" is just as important as any other element of the song.  Of course, when Paul McCartney now plays it live he had to add an arranged ending.