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Warning : this clause discourse paper of dying , mental sickness , and suicide . If you or someone you love are fight with self-destructive thoughts , please call the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 .
Death , unfortunately , is the ultimate issue of sprightliness , and despite millennia of human beings rail against that roughshod fact , no one has ever get along up with a acceptable solution to the problem . Yet over those millennium , we as a species have used our innovative nature to create forms of art that at least help us cope with the depressingly fugitive nature of mortality .
There are a plenty of ways to pen songs about death ; historically speak , many of them emerge through spiritual music , such as the Catholic Church ’s tradition of the requiem mass , which develop from ninth - C mono liturgical chants into wholesale , heartbreaking compositions such as Mozart’sRequiem in 500 shaver , K. 626or Brahms’Ein Deutsches Requiem . modernistic music has also search death as a theme in unnumberable way , fromheartbreaking hard rock songstothe follow more uplifting fare .
10The Mountain Goats – Heretic Pride
Heretic Pride (2008)
Durham , North Carolina - based dad - John Rock band The Mountain Goats have written innumerable songs of varying morbidity over the years , but none are so rejoicing as " Heretic Pride , " the rubric track off the band ’s 2008 album ; this was the first featuring drummer John Wurster , whose phenomenal pulse keep " Heretic Pride " ’s energy driving with a phrenetic , messianic pulse .
Many Song dynasty about destruction have a foreboding energy , yet " Heretic Pride " is truly triumphant from the first hit of the snare drum . The birdcall ’s narrator is clearly aware that he is being drag toward his death – and not just death , but expiry upon a pyre , the sort of destiny signify for beldam – and yet in this moment , he is joyously alive . " Transfiguration ’s gon na follow for me at last , and I will bite hotter than the Dominicus , " he almost cackle ; the misbeliever truly feels pride at being himself , even on the brink of a atrocious and public death , and that ’s a pleasure we should all be so golden to palpate .
9Blue Öyster Cult – Don’t Fear the Reaper
Agents Of Fortune (1976)
While it may be mostly immortalized at this point for its notable usance of cowbell ( andalleged want for more ) , Blue Öyster Cult ’s greatest hit of all fourth dimension is also a touching exploration of mortality and anxiousness , gently reminding the listener that death ’s inevitableness is no rationality to let a care of it take control .
PopMatterscalled it " as elevated and aroused as American stone and axial motion ever got , " and with good reason ; the understated vocals interplay beautifully with the echoing guitar to produce something ethereal , as ifBÖC themselves have become the very psychopomp they sing about .
Sometimes what build a secure television set and moving picture scene is upright music . Blue Öyster Cult ’s ( Do n’t venerate ) The Reaper has try out that multiple time .
Buck Dharma , Blue Öyster Cult ’s lead vocalist and guitar player , specifically wrote the song while remember about his own potential early death , and about how love could be something that last beyond that point . In a 2019 interview , Dharma explained his thought mental process :
I was 22 and had just been diagnosed with an atypical heart condition , which got me thinking about pass away young . " Do n’t revere the Reaper " is essentially a dearest song that imagines there is something after end and that , once in a while , you could bridge over that gap to the other side … The call ’s really about accepting the inevitableness of death . ( viaThe Guardian )
While many have thought the allusion to Romeo and Juliet was an endorsement of self-annihilation , Dharma went on in that interview to say it was n’t nearly so morbid , but rather double up down onthe thought of beloved that endure after death . " I peach about Romeo and Juliet as an example of a couple who have successfully sound to the other dimension … I was n’t suggest that people kill themselves to find out what it ’s like . "
Custom image by Zahra Huselid
8Warren Zevon – Keep Me In Your Heart
The Wind (2003)
Warren Zevon was one of the unsung heroes of the Los Angeles rock and axial rotation scene , and when he denote in 2002 that he had received a terminal diagnosis of inoperable pleural mesothelioma , he immediately began employment on one final album . The Windwasa celebration of the bite wag , cagey mental imagery , and outright emotion that had been the hallmarks of Zevon ’s songwritingever since his debut 1970 solo release , and featured guest appearances from all the friends Zevon made over his years in LA , include rock legend like Bruce Springsteen , Tom Petty , Jackson Browne , and Emmylou Harris .
" Keep Me In Your Heart , " the album ’s net strain , has none of those guests , just Zevon ’s weary vocal and some guitar , tres , bass , and tympan from his sitting player . " Shadows are falling , and I ’m campaign out of breath " isan ironic lyric , given his lung cancer , yet the rest of the song is painfully earnest , prompt listeners that"if I go away you , it does n’t mean I love you any less . "
It ’s a heartbreaking song , but the heartbreak is a comforting one . British satirist Terry Pratchett once wrote"a man is not idle while his name is still spoken , " and Zevon ’s ultimate song prompt us of the same . lifetime is short , butthere is a kind of immortality to be find in memory and storytelling .
7Streetlight Manifesto – A Better Place, A Better Time
Everything Goes Numb (2003)
Buried in the middle of New Jersey third - moving ridge - ska band Streetlight Manifesto ’s debutEverything Goes Numbis " A Better Place , A Better Time , " a birdsong that is emblematic of frontman Thomas Kalnocky ’s poignant ( if verbose ) and electic compositional expressive style . Like many of the songs onEverything Goes Numb , there ’s a sure cynicism to " A Better Place , " yet beneath the foiling lie down a cutting , aroused core that make a desperate supplication that the listenerbe stronger than the worked up free weight they may be burdened with .
With its Book of Genesis in the conversation Kalnocky had with two friends suffering from severe intellectual palsy , as well as an old college friend who trust her persistent suicidal ideation to him , " A Better Place " is a supplication for Leslie Townes Hope ( viaThe Diamondback ) . Suicidality is a symptom of someone in a desperate genial commonwealth , driven to the point of wanting their annoyance to end bad enough that death feel like a good choice . “A Better Place " urge looking beyond that grim fatigueand find just one reason to keep plump , because " when you wake up , everything is gon na be hunky-dory . "
6Johnny Cash – Ain’t No Grave
American VI: Ain’t No Grave (2010)
Just before June Carter Cash , Johnny Cash ’s wife of 35 year , pass away in other 2003 , she exhort him to keep making euphony , andso for the last few month of his own life story , the peerless Man in Black recorded 60 more songsup until the end of August ; on September 12 , he passed away as well . It acquire two years before Rick Rubin , Cash ’s producer and friend , was capable to heed to those recordings ; one batch became 2006’sAmerican V : A Hundred Highways , and a final curing was used forAmerican VI : Ai n’t No Grave(viaThe Guardian ) .
" Ai n’t No Grave " is an American gospel song also known by the name " Gon na Hold This Body Down " ; it ’s generally attributed to a Virginian preacher named Claude Ely , whose congregating for a time included a immature Elvis Presley . Many artists have recorded version of the song over the years , yetCash ’s has been considered the all important recording since its dismissal , much like how his adaptation of Trent Reznor ’s " Hurt " eclipsed the original .
Holy Writ can not describe the transcendental experience of hearing Cash ’s weary part , memorialise just months before his death , insisting that no grave would view as him down . look at Cash stay on one of the easily - selling musicians of all time , it ’s clear thatdeath itself could n’t keep the Man in Black from singing .
5Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds – Let the Bells Ring
Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus (2004)
Australian instrumentalist Nick Cave covered Johnny Cash ’s " The Isaac Bashevis Singer " on his 1986 albumKicking Against The Pricks , and the country legend returned the favor by covering Cave ’s " The Mercy Seat " on 2002’sAmerican III : Solitary Man . This central culminated in a surprising collaboration , with Cave and Cash sing a duet of Hank Williams ' classic " I ’m So lone I Could call " onAmerican IV : The Man Comes Around , which was the last record album Cash discharge before his death in 2003 ; the two also recorded a duo of the classic folk song " Cindy , " which was included on the posthumously - releasedUnearthedbox band .
" Let the Bells Ring " is Cave ’s tribute to both Johnny Cash the fable and Johnny Cash the man , someone who he saw as an untouchable figure early on in his career and who he grow close with at the very end . " There are those of us not fit to attach the laces of your shoes , " the vocal laments , echoing Cave ’s thoughts on Cash ’s passing that he had partake in inThe Guardianin November 2003 :
For me it ’s a very sad affair that he ’s died , because there goes another one of these great voices . As far as I can see there are n’t the people around to replace these people . That ’s the really sad affair about this .
And yet , for all the Song dynasty ’s maudlin flavor , there ’s a core of hope nestle in there , somewhere amid the interplay of the guitar and drum at the conclusion of each chorus . Although the world will never see another Johnny Cash , we were all blessed by his comportment , even if we did n’t jazz him personally . His music still survive , and can uphold to influence us all to be better , earnest people .
4Frank Turner – Silent Key
Positive Songs For Negative People (2015)
On January 28 , 1986 , the Space ShuttleChallengerbroke up only 73 seconds after taking off from Cape Canaveral , claiming the life of all onboard , include American schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe , who had joined the mission as a part of NASA and President Ronald Reagan ’s fledgling instructor In Space Project , which had hoped to inspire a new generation of cosmonaut and scientist in the United States .
The tragedy , which was broadcast live across the country due to the monumental media coverage of the shuttle launch , wreak the American distance programme to a screeching halt for 32 months .
While do work on the albumPositive Songs for Negative People , English singer - songster Frank Turner choose aspiration from the urban caption of McAuliffe ’s final wireless transmission – a dire " we ’re alive " – fromChallenger . His exploration of the idea in " Silent Key , " named for the full term of respectfulness amateur radio set operators habituate for their deceased peers , imagines that his four - twelvemonth - old self was the only one in the world to learn that broadcast , and the nonnatural nature ofthe noesis Christa encounter as she string up on the precipice between life and demise at the bound of the air .
3The Smith Street Band – I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore
Throw Me In The River (2014)
Wil Wagner and the rest of the Smith Street Band are a fertile group of Australian rockers , ill-famed for songs that plunge a big , sloppy pile of feelings into the auditor ’s lap with the significance that untangle that mess is n’t the circle ’s responsibility . 2014’sThrow Me In The River , produce by non - binary tough legend Jeff Rosenstock , is a painfully beautiful appeal ofsongs about heartbreak , self - loathing , and master the persistent desire to jump out off a bridge ; " I Do n’t Wanna Die Anymore " is the first of the album ’s emotional climax .
The weight of suicidal ideation is an exhausting burden to bear ; it persists even amid events that might otherwise be joyful . But " I Do n’t Wanna Die Anymore " is a renunciation of that weight unit , embracing the theme thatthere can absolutely be thing to dwell for , even on the other side of grave depressive episodes . It ’s the combat-ready choice to live , regardless of pain , after ages being stuck hope for an end to it all , and that ’s a powerful alternative to make .
2Pinback – Proceed to Memory
Information Retrieved (2012)
It ’s now been over a decade since the release ofInformation Retrieved , the most recent album from Southern California indie - rock duet Pinback ; although the set nominally still live and enlistment , and even released the individual " ROJI ( Roshomon Effect ) " in 2018 , the lack of studio output makesInformation Retrievedfeel more and more like a swan song with each take place class . " Proceed to Memory , " the album ’s first step song and lead single , may well be a preemptive eulogy as the band proceeds into computer storage .
Pinback ’s name , as well as many of the samples used in their early work , come fromDark Star , horror auteur John Carpenter ’s 1974 directorial debut and one ofthe strange blank adventure movie of all metre .
entropy Retrieveditself came out after a five - class foramen , caused in part by life , and in part by disaster ; Terrin Durfey , one of the set ’s touring penis , passed away from cancer in 2008 . Losing Durfey was so painful that frontman Rob Crowe find it unmanageable to talk over in press tour forInformation Retrieved , which wasdedicated in part to Durfey ’s memory(viaThe Line of Best Fit ) .
" Proceed to Memory " clearly draw from some of that grief , as it considers the transient nature of life and how it fades into retention . It ’s painfully bittersweet in the way any song about the loss of a champion is , and do as a poetical admonisher tocherish beloved memories while they still exist .
1Ghost – Dance Macabre
Prequelle (2018)
In medieval art tradition , the Danse Macabre ( French for " Dance of Death " ) isa build of allegorical portrayal of mortality , showing a emaciated Death saltation in a advance with representatives from all walks of life – traditionally consisting of a pope , an emperor moth , a baron , a child , and a laborer – and dating back at least to the fourteenth century , after the Black Death decimated Europe ’s universe . Musical interpretations of the concept are nearly as old , with one of the first recorded being German organist August Nörmiger’sMattasin Oder River Toden Tanzfrom 1598 .
Ghost ’s song may be about the horrors of the bubonic plague , but the music TV is an open protection toThe Rocky Horror Picture Show ’s unique aesthetic , except with sexy infestation doctors instead of Tim Curry in drag .
While Ghost ’s " Dance Macabre " may differ from traditional interpretation of the construct with its aim disco - metal musical rhythm , the song ’s lyrics and tone meet the knightly parable perfectly . In fact , all ofPrequelleis conceptually free-base around the Black Death andhow those who witness an apocalypse handle the apposition of life and loss in the middle of the end of the world . Founding member Tobias Forge ( well known by his stage persona , Papa Emeritus ) key out the brainchild for " Dance Macabre " in a 2018 interview withRevolver :
Europe was in this hullabaloo in the recent 1340s . The plague is extremely firm . It pop out off as the worst flu you ’ve ever had and then it just goes uncollectible and then you ’re stagnant after three days . So people were lying in the streets — corpses and all the environment were just falling apart . All the sporting house and public house were thriving because people started party literally like there was no tomorrow because they were gon na become flat . They were just going for it . “ Dance Macabre ” is capturing that joyous nocturnal variety of life story in a disco song .
Sources : PopMatters , The Guardian , The Diamondback , The Line of Best Fit , Revolver
