Pink Floyd, Time.
*And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around, to come up behind you again
The sun is the same, in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath – and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over…
Thought I’d something more to say…*
Flogging Molly - If I Ever Leave This World Alive
And When I Die by Blood Sweat & Tears.
I’m not scared of dying,
And I don’t really care.
If it’s peace you find in dying,
Well then let the time be near.
If it’s peace you find in dying,
And if dying time is here,
Just bundle up my coffin
'Cause it’s cold way down there.
I hear that its cold way down there.
Yeah, crazy cold way down there.
I always thought that *Ripple *by The Grateful Dead would be the perfect song to play at my funeral.
But Keep Me In Your Heart by Warren Zevon has to be the winner. The first song he wrote after he found out he was dying of lung cancer, I can not hear it without getting tears in my eyes.
Warren also gets second place for covering Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door on the same album.
But the song isn’t about dying. According to the Robbie Robertson, it’s about how people keep asking favors of you so much that they pile up. The verse clearly talks about this: when you try to ease your burdens and responsibilities, someone puts this right back.
Good choice. The song is clearly about death, even though it never mentions it.
Myself, I’m partial to John Prine’s Please Don’t Bury Me, which I suppose could be about organ donation.
I’ve always been impressed with What Sarah Said by Death Cab for Cutie. The last lyric, “Love is watching someone die,” always gives me goosebumps.
Box of Rain is another good one, though again written from the view point of watching someone die.
Yeah, well what does he know, he only wrote the song.
Both John Lennon and Donald Fagen noted that once you put a song out there -no matter what your original intent was- the masses are entitled to interpret it how ever they see fit.
Without getting into pscho-babble speak about what Robertson -or any songwriter- truly meant to say when they wrote their songs:
I get the vaguely biblical references about Nazareth (yes, I know it’s referring to the guitar-ville in Pennsylvania ) Luke, Judgment Day, etc. and it seems a perfectly logical extension that the lyrics can equally apply to the burdens laid upon us by others as to checking out and lying down for the big dirt nap.
Truly one’s MMV.
Speaking of Death Cab for Cutie, there’s I Will Follow You Into the Dark:
Love Of Mine Some Day You Will Die
But I’ll Be Close Behind
I’ll Follow You Into The Dark
No Blinding Light Or Tunnels To Gates Of White
Just Our Hands Clasped So Tight
Waiting For The Hint Of A Spark
Old and Wise by The Alan Parsons Project.
Ba doo da, dum dum dum … “Another One Bite’s the Dust”
Ba doo da, dum dum dum … “Another One Bite’s the Dust”
And another one does and another one does … another one bites the dust. Hey!
When I heard the old song “This Old House” as a kid, I figured it was just about an old house. I don’t know when realized it wasn’t just a literal house that was “gettin’ ready to meet the saints.”
From a Christian perspective at least, no one writes better songs about death and dying than Terry Scott Taylor: “A Briefing for the Ascent” and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (which he wrote for his grandmother and sang to her on her deathbed), “Rebecca Go Home,” “My Hand To God.” “One More Time”
What gave you the first clue? 
Funny thing is, I really like Cruxshadows once I started listening to them.
Yep. Followed by Brokedown Palace, naturally.
Oh, god yes. I loved the song anyway, and then, last year in October, my dad was in an extremely bad motorcycle accident. When we first went to the hospital, and every doctor was telling us he wouldn’t make it, as we walked into the room, seeing him surrounded by so much medical equipment, the middle of that song started playing in my head:
And, suddenly, all the numbness that had covered me was broken, and I just started to cry hysterically, which is the measure of a truly emotional song for me. (I’m sort of hard to get started crying. I’m pretty stoic and try not to be a bother usually.)
(My father is, thank science, recovering now in a nursing home, but it was a loooooong fight.)
Fair ye well, fair ye well
I love you more than words can tell
listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul
The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond:
Old Scots Song,
By yon bonnie banks,
And by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond,
Where me and my true love
Were ever want to gae,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
Oh! ye’ll take the high road and
I’ll take the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye;
But me and my true love
Will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.
From this site:
“I’ll Take You Home Kathleen is not, in fact, a tune of Irish origin. It was written in 1875 by Thomas Westendorf, a public school music teacher in Plainfield, Illinois, and was the first public performance of the tune was in Plainfield’s town hall. Westendorf wrote the tune for his wife Jeanie, while she was visiting her home town of Ogdensburg, New York.”
It’s still a lovely song though.
I’ll go with* Fall of Troy* by Tom Waits. There are not many sadder songs about.
I have to second Paint It Black.
One that I would not call “the best,” but is currently one of my favorites, is My Chemical Romance Welcome to the Black Parade. Not so much the lyrics or the sentiment, which are pretty hollow, but the surprisingly textured music itself. Starts slow, somewhat mournful, then kicks into the very energetic second half of the song, which is very much for the living. That, and the guitarist has transcendent moments where it sounds like Brian May sat down a session with a pop-punk band.
I guess upon mentioning Queen, I should give a two-fer: Who Wants to Live Forever and, far more raw, The Show Must Go On, which was written about, and released just before, Freddie Mercury’s impending death.
As Minlokwat, post #27, says
“Yeah, well what does he know, he only wrote the song. Both John Lennon and Donald Fagen noted that once you put a song out there -no matter what your original intent was- the masses are entitled to interpret it how ever they see fit.”
Light Years by Pearl Jam (chills)