Other Metallica songs that fit the bill: Wherever I May Roam (singer is a ghost, as revealed in the last verse) Fade to Black (final lyrics imply suicide) Trapped Under Ice (singer is… well, just like it says on the tin)
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Seasons in the Sun - Terry Jacks.
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“Passage” - a devastating song by Vienna Teng from the POV of a woman who died in a car crash.
Hap has a few, of course.
“Lay Me Down” is from the POV of a woman being buried.
“Temporary and Eternal” has three dead characters: a narrator who is, I believe, an angel, and two recently-deceased elderly people who are looking back over their lives and regretting roads not taken. (here’s a much more ethereal version than that acoustic version)
“Ecto” is sung by a dying woman vowing to come back as a protective ghost. (there’s a story behind the monster, he’s a good guy. This is the first song I ever heard by her, 25 years ago, and I was instantly smitten, and said smittening is of course still strong as steel.)
“Find Me” is about a woman who’s been in a shipwreck and has been floating at sea for days waiting for rescue that never comes. She’s minutes away from death and then sinks into the deep.
“Roy (Back From The Offworld)” doesn’t quite qualify because it has a chorus, but most of the song is from the POV of Roy Batty, the replicant in Blade Runner, right before he dies.
Gah. And after much argufying, turns out I shouldn’t have included that darn song anyhow. :smack: Just leaves Bat Out Of Hell, then.
In The Dream of Gerontius, the title character is on his deathbed all through the first act, and dead in the second - it’s just that we get to hear him singing along with his guardian angel (and some supporting characters) on the way to Judgement and then Purgatory. That’s probably the longest piece of singing that qualifies!
Alfred Williams’ “Would Hatton Cross Be An Improvement?” is about a ghost that is haunting a house in Hounslow, one of the perils of having the site of your death a few hundred years earlier be developed. Sadly it’s not up on his website for your listening pleasure, although it’s included in this podcast which is worth a listen all around.
No classical music fans at the SDMB? What about the famous Liebestod (“love death”) at the end of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde? Of course, sticklers might argue that Isolde does not actually die as the opera ends, but that seems contrary to the Romeo-and-Juliet-like theme of the opera: lovers reunited in death.
From the musical, 1776, a young army courier sings “Mama, Look Sharp.” Sung from a late friend’s point of view as his mother searches a Massachusetts field for her son’s body.
I Come and Stand At Every Door by, well, a lot of people - The Byrds, Dylan, This Mortal Coil - is from the viewpoint of a seven-year-old killed at Hiroshiima.
Storyline is that 8 people have been chosen from different eras and places in human history by a mysterious disembodied being. He brings them to a strange and dangerous place called the Electric Castle for reasons unknown. The Tunnel of Light is about the dying moments of the Highlander after he’s fatally wounded by the Barbarian after the strange being tells them one of them can not continue. Valley of the Queens is about the death of the Egyptian, who is convinced that she’s there as a test devised by her gods, and now she is returning home to them in disgrace and despair.
