Swan songs: the greatest final albums

Released on Bowie's 69th birthday, January 8, 2016; he died two days later. He'd written and recorded it knowing, with a jazz quartet and total secrecy. "I can't give everything away," runs the final song. The most controlled exit in the history of the art form.

Mark Hollis assembled hours of improvisation into six tracks of hushed, devotional near-silence, released it in 1991, and essentially never made music publicly again. The rare swan song that sounds like a band ascending rather than ending.

Released two months after Ian Curtis's death in May 1980, with a tomb on the cover chosen beforehand. Songs this stark ("The Eternal," "Decades") would be harrowing in any context; as a final album they're almost unbearable.

Recorded in his living room at 82, released 19 days before his death in November 2016. "Hineni, hineni, I'm ready, my Lord," Cohen intones over a synagogue choir. He knew exactly what he was doing, as ever.

Let It Be came out later, but Abbey Road (1969) was the last thing the Beatles recorded, and they knew it. The side-two medley ends on "The End" and the most famous closing couplet in pop. A band burying itself in style.

Released in February 1991, nine months before Freddie Mercury's death, with his illness still secret. "The Show Must Go On" (recorded when he could barely stand, sung like he'd live forever) turns the whole album into defiance.

Diagnosed with terminal cancer, Zevon recorded The Wind (2003) in a year he wasn't supposed to have, with half of rock royalty dropping by. "Keep Me in Your Heart" is the gentlest goodbye ever set to tape.

31 beat sketches assembled largely from a hospital bed, released on Dilla's 32nd birthday, three days before his death in February 2006. Instrumental hip-hop's most loved record, full of sirens, soul loops and jokes from a man signing off.

Not planned as an ending, but 1993's In Utero reads like one: Steve Albini's raw room sound, Cobain singing "I miss the comfort in being sad." Seven months later it was a final album. Its abrasiveness now sounds like honesty.