Songfacts®:

• "The Song Is Over," a lament for a lost love, was written by Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of The Who as the finale to the Lifehouse movie, a Townshend project that never materialized. In the film, it was to play as the character Bobby and the crowd vanish, and continue through the end credits.
  
  A lot of the music written for the movie landed on the 1971 Who's Next album, including this one. Some of those songs, including "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," became Who classics, but "The Song Is Over" remains one of their more obscure tracks.
• The song quotes from another Who's Next track, "Pure And Easy," in its final bars:
  
  Searchin' for a note, pure and easy
  Playing so free, like a breath rippling by
  
  It also borrows from a 1967 song called "Party Piece for Rael" that Townshend wrote for his never-finished rock opera Rael.
• Pete Townshend's original version can be heard on his 1999 solo album Lifehouse Chronicles.
• Nicky Hopkins played piano on this song. Hopkins recorded and performed on many notable British and American pop and rock music releases from the 1960s through the 1990s including many Rolling Stones songs.
• Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey share the vocals on this song. "When we do get together musically in this way, it's like we both acknowledge that there's something greater than the two of us," Townshend told Uncut magazine. "I love this song. And a lot of people love it too. It's an aspirational, kind of corny testament to the universe."
• Fifty-four years after its original release, The Who performed "The Song Is Over" live for the first time at the 2025 Teenage Cancer Trust gig series on March 30, 2025 at the Royal Albert Hall in London.