The Rolling Stones - “Flight 505”
“Please Mr. Custer”
Half of Eminems “Stan”
John Prine, “Please Don’t Bury Me”
Woke up this morning, put on my slippers, walked in the kitchen and died.
“Yankee Bayonet” is another one. It’s a duet between a pregnant woman and her husband who was killed in the Civil War.
“Eli the Barrow Boy” is also partially narrated by the deceased protagonist.
An ancient, long unused, neuron in a far back region of my brain just went “ding”.
“Forward, ho!”
The narrator isn’t dead at the end of the song, he is just about to kill his nemesis. Sometime after the song they will both be whale poop.
Would “Renegade” by Styx count?
“Hangman is coming down from the gallows and I don’t have very long.”
Long Black Vail
She walks these hills in a long black veil
She visits my grave when the night winds wail
Nobody knows, nobody sees
Nobody knows but me
In one of the Harry Potter books, the ghost Nearly Headless Nick sings a song* that tells the story of his crime and botched execution. I’ve not seen all of the movies, I don’t know if it was filmed.
- or maybe recited a poem.
The Highwayman describes several deaths in the first person, presumably all reincarnated versions of the same highwayman.
There’s also a lesser-known song by the Charlie Daniels Band called Caballo Diablo, about the narrator’s obsession with taming the “half-horse, half-devil.” Spoiler alert: It doesn’t end well for either of them.
I guess we’re counting inevitable death, in which case you missed the on-the nose “They’re Hanging Me Tonight” from the same album.
More Nick Cave - half of “Where the Wild Roses Grow”
Half of Magnetic Fields - Yeah! Oh, Yeah!
Hey, did I miss a mention of “Jeannie Needs A Shooter” or “Indiana Wants Me” in the previous posts? I guess one could argue that we don’t know if the narrator is simply seriously wounded…
Sonora’s Death Row
Edit: Nevermind, he’s waiting to be hung, but not dead yet.
No, see #43. I’m interested in songs where the narrator is already dead; where it’s logically impossible for them to be singing this song. Sorry that wasn’t clearer in the OP.
How about The Highwayman? One of the few country songs about reincarnation. Narrator keeps living and dying and living and dying and living and…
Sung by Willie, Waylon, Kris, and Johnny.
Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!!!