Wait…one more dammit because there’s four of them.
Wait Until Tomorrow by Jimi Hendrix:
Do I see a silhouette of somebody pointing something from a tree?
CLICK, BANG
Oh, what a hang
Your daddy just shot poor me
And I hear you say, as I fade away
We don’t have to wait until tomorrow
It must not have been right, so forever, goodnight
Suicidal Thoughts - Biggie
I can’t really drop a Biggie track without balancing it out with some Tupac so…
I Wonder If Heaven Got A Ghetto (piano version)
Not really along the rules since Tupac talked A LOT about death (and contemplated his own death) in his songs, his work doesn’t really flow in a story/narrative structure.
I’m Sorry - Joyner Lucas
It couldn’t have been any worse than “In the Year 2525.”
Michael Hurley, Peter Stampfel, and the Unholy Modal Rounders’s “Jealous Daddy’s Death Song” from Have Moicy, 1975.
*So now I’m leavin’ this world of sin
One pretty woman and a lotta you men.
I’m telling you boys
Don’t you monkey with my widow when I’m gone…
If any o’ you punks try to misbehave
I’ll haunt your asses to an early grave.
I’m telling you, telling you, telling you boys
Don’t you monkey with my widow when I’m gone.*
Worth hearing in its entirety. Robert Christgau of the Village Voice called Have Moicy the greatest album of the 1970s.
Maybe The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde by Merle Haggard?
They certainly died.
John Prine’s Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore
The song ends with quite a long outro. Considering that the singer is in the belly of a whale and resigned to his fate, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that he breathes his last before the final chords.
Highwayman by The Highwaymen
The Last Leviathan by Rory Block, which is a first person accounting of the extinction of whales.
And, of course, the traditional wake song The Parting Glass. I wanted to include Carrickfergus, but the singer has not quite died at the end.
He’s an outlaw who has definitely been caught, and is definitely about to be executed.
Not quite dead yet, though…
But they aren’t narrating the song, though.
‘What Have You Got Planned Tonight Diana‘ Merle Haggard.
Has anyone mentioned Long, Black Veil?
“I feel happy! I feel happy!”
Kind of an obscure one, but “Me And You Vs. The World” by Space (this is the second thread in the past week I’ve brought up a Space song. Very underrated band I’m clearly trying to push!).
Dang, I came here to share this one, so I’ll have to go with Al’s “Melanie”:
You weren’t impressed when I tattooed
Your name across my forehead
You wouldn’t listen when I promised to be true
I couldn’t stand it, so I jumped out
From the sixteenth story window right above you
Now I may be dead but I still love you
Can’t stand losing you - The Police
Macarthur Park - Richard Harris