Lots and lots of people are not reading the OP. This is supposed to be about people who were still alive when the song was written, people.
“The Death of Suzzy Roche” by the Roches.
Well, not really.
Blue Oyster Cult -
“Joan Crawford has risen from the dead.”
Yeah, it’s even in the thread title.
The Righteous Brothers released an updated version of “Rock and Roll Heaven” in 1992. I can’t find the lyrics online, but they mention Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Roy Orbison, Jackie Wilson, and Rick Nelson in the first verse, and the second verse goes on to mention Dennis Wilson, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, “Mama” Cass Elliot, and Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Semi-nitpick: Some of these songs mention dead people but do not specifically mention their deaths.
John Fahey did a song called “The Assassination of Stephan Grossman”; Stefan Grossman replied with a song called “The Assassination of John Fahey”. Both, however, are instrumentals.
“We Hung John Brown Body from a Sour Apple Tree”
“That Dirty Little Coward That Shot Mister Howard (and laid poor Jessie in his Grave)”
OK, my bad–I missed the “if not” and thought we wanted strictly the situation(whether the subject is currently living or dead) as described in the previous two lines. Thanks for the correction.
That song crushes me everytime I hear it.
The same subject: Edie (Ciao Baby) by The Cult
JFK in “Tomorrow Wendy”:
Underneath the chilly gray November sky
We can make believe that Kennedy is still alive and
Were shooting for the moon and smiling Jackie’s driving by
Jonathan Coulton’s “Mandelbrot” had the line “Mandelbrot’s in heaven - or he will be when he’s dead. For now he’s alive and teaching math at Yale.”
Don’t know what he changed the lyrics to.
They asked the audience to vote on whether the song should be sung, and the audience voted to keep it.
How specific does it need to be? If it describes someone as “living it up to die,” or as “pushing up the daisies,” or “let him die,” I’m counting it, but others might not.
Tom Paxton did it first, having written the song. Paxton also wrote Crazy John about John Lennon in 1972.
When you wade in the water, the people can’t see the old reflections.
When you stand in the road, the people can’t read the old directions.
When the people get lost, they start building a cross.
Lennon himself declared “They’re gonna crucify me!” in the Beatles’ “Ballad of John & Yoko.”
I was thinking about songs like “Nightshift” or “Rock and Roll Heaven”. They’re about people who are dead, but I’m not sure they qualify for the OP’s specification of “deaths mentioned in a song”.
This little ditty was popular among older kids in the 90s:
I hate you, you hate me
We shove Barney up a tree
With a gun and a knife, we shot him in the head
Aren’t you glad that Barney’s dead