Songs About Death

Death is a subject that we all try to avoid at any cost. We try to mask it with euphemisms - our final reward, a better place, passing away, the great beyond, the final curtain, permanent vacation, sleeping with the daisies, six feet under. However, the reality of death is all around us, in our personal lives, in nature, and on television twenty-four hours a day. We can paint over it with gentle words and avert or eyes from its cold stare until it comes knocking for us, but it won't go away. It's always lurking in the shadows. This idea is not easy to accept.

Leave it to the artists to make us face the music, so to speak. Musicians can take this most dreaded topic and put it to music with profound lyrics and a chorus and lure us into accepting, metaphorically at least, the inevitable.
We can elude the reality of death for only a limited, unspecified amount of time. At least through song, we can have the closest thing to a dress rehearsal of that final encore we will some day be called upon to play. Hopefully, the following songs can help you prepare for this great inevitiablity:*

Death Came a Knockin' (Travelin' Shoes) - Ruthie FosterRuthie Foster sings deep from her heart and soul about the readiness to accept death with open arms when he comes calling your name. This gospel, blues tune is effectively stripped down instrumentally to its bare essentials, as if to stand as a metaphor for how we enter and leave this world with no worldly possessions.

All Dead, All Dead - QueenThe protagonist of this gentle piano dirge by Queen reminisces over a lost loved one. He finds solace in the good times they shared when she was alive and finds hope in the promise of being together again, yet still denies that she is really gone. This tune beautifully captures the gamut of emotions one must deal with when confronting the finality of death.

And When I Die - Blood Sweat and TearsBlood Sweat and Tears covers this Laura Nyro tune and transforms it into a hybrid of blues, folk and gospel to preach a fearless, apathetic approach to death as long as it is on agreeable terms - peaceful, Satan free, and includes the assurance that your spirit will live on through your children. If it were this easy, death would not be such a dreaded certainty.

Dirt in the Ground - Tom WaitsThis somber tune doesn't even try to put a happy face on our final demise. Tom Waits, in a disturbingly soothing whine promises no incentives of a spiritual reward or afterlife for our soul. Instead, he buries us six feet under the reality of the fate of our physical presence when our life ends.

Castles Made of Sand - Jimi HendrixThis short, restrained tune serves as a subtle, melancholy reminder that life is not forever. Regardless of your status in life, death is as certain and undiscriminating as the tide washing away grains of sand on the beach.

Don't Fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster CultThis evocative melody cautions us that death cannot be denied. This song entices us not to fear the personification of death and encourages us, like so many others who went before to greet his seduction in a romantic display of emotion and to grab his hand and let him take you away.

The End - The DoorsJim Morrison's haunting vocals and the hypnotic instrumentation by The Doors take us on a surreal, mythical journey that builds to a crescendo of emotion and culminates in a subdued, final cold embrace.

People Who Died - Jim CarrollThis chaotic tune reminds us about the randomness and suddenness of death surrounding us in our everyday lives as we are given a musical obituary of the multitude of Carroll's friends that died untimely deaths.

In My Time of Dying - Led ZeppelinLed Zeppelin reworks this old blues tune that begins cautiously, like we may all initially face death and climaxes in a barrage of guitar, drums and haunting vocals evoking the raw emotions surrounding the surrender to one's own unavoidable death.

Great Gig in the Sky - Pink FloydThis song masterfully paints a picture of our confrontation with the reality of our own departure from life as we know it. Against the backdrop of timid despair elicited by the subtle piano and combined with the palpable, instrumental voice of Clare Torry, which without words evokes first the passionate anger and denial in the face of one's own death, then gradually fades to subdued, helpless acceptance of our own expiration. This tune gives new meaning to the phrase "unspoken truth."

*These songs are for educational and reference purposes only and are performed and written by the credited artists.

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Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood,_Sweat_%26_Tears

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Carroll#cite_note-7
http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2665