This article defines and demonstrates a formal type I call “terminally climactic forms.” These forms, which appear frequently in rock songs after 1990, are characterized by their balance between the expected memorable highpoint (the chorus) and the thematically independent terminal climax, the song’s actual high point, which appears only once at the end of the song. After presenting the rationale for such forms, including new models of rock endings and climaxes, the article presents archetypes for three classifications of terminally climactic forms: two-part, three-part, and extended. Each archetype is supported by analytical examples from the post-millennial rock corpus. In his primer on rock song form, John Covach writes: “In a verse-chorus [form] ... the focus of the song is squarely on the chorus. ... [T]he verse serves primarily to prepare the return of the chorus.” Similarly, Walter Everett notes that “[t]he pop song typically alternates verses and choruses. These will usually be balanced by one or two statements of a contrasting bridge.” These commonly held axioms about rock song form represent an archetype I call the “verse–chorus paradigm,” a perception that acts both as a methodological constraint on analysts, and as a compositional constraint on songwriters. While this paradigm faithfully models the music for which it was intended (that being conventional rock from about 1957 to 1990), many songs from the past 10 to 15 years are not structured in this way. Rather than relying on a repeated chorus, these songs seem to be directed toward a single moment of new material at the end. This novel and refreshing model for organizing songs is what I call terminally climactic form (TCF), where not a chorus but a single, thematically independent section placed at the end functions as the song’s most memorable moment. TCF’s unique dramatic shape derives from tension between the expected highpoint (repeated chorus) and the climactic ending, the song’s actual highpoint.