Closing Time (Semisonic song)

"Closing Time"
Song

"Closing Time" is a song by Semisonic from their album Feeling Strangely Fine. The band's most popular song, it was written by Dan Wilson and produced by Nick Launay. The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song in 1999. It peaked at #1 on the Modern Rock Tracks.

The place that closes seems to be a pickup bar, noted by the lines:

One last call for alcohol

So finish your whiskey or beer

...

You don't have to go home

But you can't stay here

...

So gather up your jackets

Move it to the exits

I hope you have found a friend

However, the book So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star (ISBN 0-7679-1470-8) by Semisonic's drummer Jacob Slichter indicates that it is, instead, about being born: the place that is closing is the womb, and the mention of alcohol is a reference to pregnant women not drinking. This can be seen in the lines:

Time for you to go out to the places you will be from

...

This room won't be open 'til your brothers or your sisters

come

This interpretation has additional support. In a show in which he opened up for Sondre Lerche, Dan Wilson noted that the song was NOT written for the birth of his child; in an attempt not to be one of those annoying songs that an artist wrote for the birth of a "jr," he made sure the meaning was abstracted.

Music video

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), who is playing the part of the singer Dan Wilson’s girlfriend. As the video progresses, Dan and the waitress switch sides of screen, as they attempt to meet up. At the end of the video, they both wind up at the same nightclub, but just as they are about to see one another, their view is obscured by a waitress walking through their line of sight, and Dan leaves the club alone.

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 during the filming to get the two sides of the video lined up properly.

In popular culture

• This song is featured on The Simpsons season 19 episode "That 90's Show".
• A segment of the song is used in a polka medley by "Weird Al" Yankovic, titled "Polka Power".
• This song has also been featured in a music video for the popular television series Friends. This video shows the clips of the series finale with song playing in the background. Also in Friends it appeared in 'The One With Rachel's Date', before the final credits.
• This song was played during the Cold Case Season 5 Episode, "That Woman".
• It was played on Asses to Ashes, in the last scene of the the last episode of the 90s show Melrose Place (# 227).
• In an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the villian of the film Soultaker says, "It's closing time" to which Crow T. Robot responds, "Does that mean every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end?"
• In an episode of The Drew Carey Show, the bartender says something to the effect of "It's closing time, you know what that means. You don't have to go home..." as Carey and his friends say along with the bartender, "...but you can't stay here."
• Neil Patrick Harris's character Barney Stinson references the song during the How I Met Your Mother Season 4 Episode, Three Days of Snow (How I Met Your Mother), saying "Closing time, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here. Man, I always wanted to say that."
• It was played over a montage of Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Jr. at the end of NBC's broadcast of Earnhardt Jr's win in the 2001 Pepsi 400 at Daytona.
• Singer Adams Hambüger-Hatt released a German version titled Ladenschluß.

External links

• Music video for "Closing Time" on YouTube