Warning: this article discusses themes of death, mental illness, and suicide. If you or someone you love are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Death, unfortunately, is the ultimate consequence of life, and despite millennia of human beings railing against that cruel fact, no one has ever come up with a satisfactory solution to the problem. Yet over those millennia, we as a species have used our innovative nature to create forms of art that at least help us cope with the depressingly fleeting nature of mortality.
There are a lot of ways to write songs about death; historically speaking, many of them emerged through religious music, such as the Catholic Church’s tradition of the requiem mass, which evolved from ninth-century monophonic liturgical chants into sweeping, heartbreaking compositions such as Mozart’sRequiem in D minor, K. 626or Brahms’Ein Deutsches Requiem. Modern music has also explored death as a theme in innumerable ways, fromheartbreaking hard rock songstothe following more uplifting fare.
10The Mountain Goats – Heretic Pride
Heretic Pride (2008)
Durham, North Carolina-based dad-rock band The Mountain Goats have written innumerable songs of varying morbidity over the years, but none are so triumphant as “Heretic Pride,” the title track off the band’s 2008 album; this was the first featuring drummer John Wurster, whose phenomenal beats keep “Heretic Pride”’s energy driving with a frantic, messianic pulse.
Many songs about death have a foreboding energy, yet “Heretic Pride” is truly triumphant from the first hit of the snare drum. The song’s narrator is clearly aware that he is being dragged toward his death – and not just death, but death upon a pyre, the sort of fate meant for witches – and yet in this moment, he is gleefully alive. “Transfiguration’s gonna come for me at last, and I will burn hotter than the sun,” he almost cackles; the heretic truly feels pride at being himself,even on the brink of a painful and public death, and that’s a joy we should all be so lucky to feel.
9Blue Öyster Cult – Don’t Fear the Reaper
Agents Of Fortune (1976)
While it may be mostly immortalized at this point for its notable use of cowbell (andalleged need for more), Blue Öyster Cult’s greatest hit of all time is also a poignant exploration of mortality and anxiety, gently reminding the listener that death’s inevitability is no reason to let a fear of it take control.
PopMatterscalled it “as grand and emotional as American rock and roll ever got,” and with good reason; the understated vocals interplay beautifully with the echoing guitars to create something ethereal, as ifBÖC themselves have become the very psychopomp they sing about.
10 Best Uses Of Blue Öyster Cult’s (Don’t Fear) The Reaper In Movies & TV
Sometimes what makes a good TV and movie scene is good music. Blue Öyster Cult’s (Don’t Fear) The Reaper has proven that multiple times.
Buck Dharma, Blue Öyster Cult’s lead vocalist and guitarist, specifically wrote the song while thinking about his own possible early death, and about how love could be something that lasted beyond that point. In a 2019 interview, Dharma explained his thought process:
I was 22 and had just been diagnosed with an irregular heart condition, which got me thinking about dying young. “Don’t Fear the Reaper” is basically a love song that imagines there is something after death and that, once in a while, you can bridge that gap to the other side… The song’s really about accepting the inevitability of death. (viaThe Guardian)
While many have thought the allusion to Romeo and Juliet was an endorsement of suicide, Dharma went on in that interview to say it wasn’t nearly so morbid, but rather doubling down onthe idea of love that persists after death. “I sang about Romeo and Juliet as an example of a couple who have successfully gone to the other dimension … I wasn’t suggesting that people kill themselves to find out what it’s like.”
8Warren Zevon – Keep Me In Your Heart
The Wind (2003)
Warren Zevon was one of the unsung heroes of the Los Angeles rock and roll scene, and when he announced in 2002 that he had received a terminal diagnosis of inoperable pleural mesothelioma, he immediately began work on one final album.The Windwasa celebration of the biting wit, clever imagery, and outright emotion that had been the hallmarks of Zevon’s songwritingever since his debut 1970 solo release, and featured guest appearances from all the friends Zevon made over his years in LA, including rock legends like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, and Emmylou Harris.
“Keep Me In Your Heart,” the album’s final song, has none of those guests, just Zevon’s weary vocals and some guitar, tres, bass, and drums from his session musicians. “Shadows are falling, and I’m running out of breath” isan ironic lyric, given his lung cancer, yet the rest of the song is painfully earnest, reminding listeners that"if I leave you, it doesn’t mean I love you any less."
It’s a heartbreaking song, but the heartbreak is a comforting one.British satirist Terry Pratchett once wrote"a man is not dead while his name is still spoken," and Zevon’s ultimate song reminds us of the same. Life is short, butthere is a form of immortality to be found in memory and storytelling.
7Streetlight Manifesto – A Better Place, A Better Time
Everything Goes Numb (2003)
Buried in the middle of New Jersey third-wave-ska band Streetlight Manifesto’s debutEverything Goes Numbis “A Better Place, A Better Time,” a song that is emblematic of frontman Thomas Kalnocky’s poignant (if verbose) and electic compositional style. Like many of the songs onEverything Goes Numb, there’s a certain cynicism to “A Better Place,” yet beneath the frustration lies a raw, emotional core that makes a desperate plea that the listenerbe stronger than the emotional weight they may be burdened with.
With its genesis in the conversations Kalnocky had with two friends suffering from severe cerebral palsy, as well as an old college friend who confided her persistent suicidal ideation to him, “A Better Place” is a plea for hope (viaThe Diamondback). Suicidality is a symptom of someone in a desperate mental state, driven to the point of wanting their pain to end badly enough that death feels like a good alternative.“A Better Place” urges looking beyond that grim fatigueand finding just one reason to keep going, because “when you wake up, everything is gonna be fine.”
6Johnny Cash – Ain’t No Grave
American VI: Ain’t No Grave (2010)
Just before June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash’s wife of 35 years, died in early 2003, she urged him to keep making music, andso for the last few months of his own life, the peerless Man in Black recorded 60 more songsup until the end of August; on September 12, he passed away as well. It took two years before Rick Rubin, Cash’s producer and friend, was able to listen to those recordings; one batch became 2006’sAmerican V: A Hundred Highways, and a final set was used forAmerican VI: Ain’t No Grave(viaThe Guardian).
“Ain’t No Grave” is an American gospel song also known by the name “Gonna Hold This Body Down”; it’s generally attributed to a Virginian preacher named Claude Ely, whose congregation for a time included a young Elvis Presley. Many artists have recorded versions of the song over the years, yetCash’s has been considered the essential recording since its release, much like how his version of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt” eclipsed the original.
Words cannot describe the transcendental experience of hearing Cash’s weary voice, recorded just months before his death, insisting that no grave would hold him down. Considering Cash remains one of the best-selling musicians of all time, it’s clear thatdeath itself couldn’t keep the Man in Black from singing.
Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus (2004)
Australian musician Nick Cave covered Johnny Cash’s “The Singer” on his 1986 albumKicking Against The Pricks, and the country legend returned the favor by covering Cave’s “The Mercy Seat” on 2002’sAmerican III: Solitary Man.This exchange culminated in a surprising collaboration, with Cave and Cash singing a duet of Hank Williams' classic “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” onAmerican IV: The Man Comes Around, which was the last album Cash released before his death in 2003; the two also recorded a duet of the classic folk song “Cindy,” which was included on the posthumously-releasedUnearthedbox set.
“Let the Bells Ring” is Cave’s tribute to both Johnny Cash the legend and Johnny Cash the man,someone who he saw as an untouchable figure early on in his career and who he grew close with at the very end. “There are those of us not fit to tie the laces of your shoes,” the song laments, echoing Cave’s thoughts on Cash’s passing that he had shared inThe Guardianin November 2003:
For me it’s a very sad thing that he’s died, because there goes another one of these great voices. As far as I can see there aren’t the people around to replace these people. That’s the really sad thing about this.
And yet, for all the song’s maudlin tone, there’s a kernel of hope nestled in there, somewhere amid the interplay of the guitar and drums at the end of each chorus. Although the world will never see another Johnny Cash,we were all blessed by his presence, even if we didn’t know him personally. His music still exists, and can continue to influence us all to be better, earnest people.
4Frank Turner – Silent Key
Positive Songs For Negative People (2015)
On Jun 04, 2025, the Space ShuttleChallengerbroke up only 73 seconds after taking off from Cape Canaveral,claiming the lives of all onboard, including American schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, who had joined the mission as a part of NASA and President Ronald Reagan’s fledgling Teacher In Space Project, which had hoped to inspire a new generation of astronauts and scientists in the United States.
The tragedy, which was broadcast live nationwide due to the massive media coverage of the shuttle launch, brought the American space program to a screeching halt for 32 months.
While working on the albumPositive Songs for Negative People, English singer-songwriter Frank Turner took inspiration from the urban legend of McAuliffe’s final radio transmission – a desperate “we’re alive” – fromChallenger. His exploration of the idea in “Silent Key,” named for the term of respect amateur radio operators use for their deceased peers, imagines that his four-year-old self was the only one in the world to hear that broadcast, and the transcendental nature ofthe knowledge Christa found as she hung on the precipice between life and death at the edge of the atmosphere.
3The Smith Street Band – I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore
Throw Me In The River (2014)
Wil Wagner and the rest of the Smith Street Band are a prolific group of Australian rockers, notorious for songs that dump a big, sloppy pile of feelings into the listener’s lap with the implication that untangling that mess isn’t the band’s responsibility. 2014’sThrow Me In The River, produced by non-binary punk legend Jeff Rosenstock, is a painfully beautiful collection ofsongs about heartbreak, self-loathing, and overcoming the persistent desire to jump off a bridge; “I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore” is the beginning of the album’s emotional climax.
The weight of suicidal ideation is an exhausting burden to bear; it persists even amid events that might otherwise be joyful. But “I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore” is a repudiation of that weight, embracing the idea thatthere can absolutely be things to live for, even on the other side of severe depressive episodes. It’s the active choice to live, regardless of pain, after ages being stuck hoping for an end to it all, and that’s a powerful choice to make.
2Pinback – Proceed to Memory
Information Retrieved (2012)
It’s now been over a decade since the release ofInformation Retrieved, the most recent album from Southern California indie-rock duo Pinback; although the band nominally still exists and tours, and even released the single “ROJI (Roshomon Effect)” in 2018, the lack of studio output makesInformation Retrievedfeel more and more like a swan song with each passing year. “Proceed to Memory,” the album’s opening song and lead single, may well be a preemptive eulogy as the band proceeds into memory.
Pinback’s name, as well as many of the samples used in their early work, come fromDark Star, horror auteur John Carpenter’s 1974 directorial debut and one ofthe strangest space adventure films of all time.
Information Retrieveditself came out after a five-year hiatus, caused in part by life, and in part by tragedy; Terrin Durfey, one of the band’s touring members, passed away from cancer in 2008. Losing Durfey was so painful that frontman Rob Crowe found it difficult to discuss in press tours forInformation Retrieved, which wasdedicated in part to Durfey’s memory(viaThe Line of Best Fit).
“Proceed to Memory” clearly draws from some of that grief, as it considers the transient nature of life and how it fades into memory. It’s painfully bittersweet in the way any song about the loss of a friend is, and serves as a poetic reminder tocherish beloved memories while they still exist.
1Ghost – Dance Macabre
Prequelle (2018)
In medieval art tradition, the Danse Macabre (French for “Dance of Death”) isa form of allegorical depiction of mortality, showing a skeletal Death dancing in a procession with representatives from all walks of life – traditionally consisting of a pope, an emperor, a king, a child, and a laborer – and dating back at least to the 14th century, after the Black Death decimated Europe’s population. Musical interpretations of the concept are nearly as old, with one of the first recorded being German organist August Nörmiger’sMattasin oder Toden Tanzfrom 1598.
Ghost’s song may be about the horrors of the bubonic plague, but the music video is an overt tribute toThe Rocky Horror Picture Show’s unique aesthetic, except with sexy plague doctors instead of Tim Curry in drag.
While Ghost’s “Dance Macabre” may differ from traditional interpretations of the concept with its driving disco-metal beat, the song’s lyrics and tone fit the medieval allegory perfectly. In fact, all ofPrequelleis conceptually based around the Black Death andhow those who witness an apocalypse handle the juxtaposition of life and loss in the middle of the end of the world. Founding member Tobias Forge (better known by his stage persona, Papa Emeritus) described the inspiration for “Dance Macabre” in a 2018 interview withRevolver:
Europe was in this turmoil in the late 1340s. The plague is extremely fast. It starts off as the worst flu you’ve ever had and then it just goes worse and then you’re dead after three days. So people were lying in the streets — corpses and all the surroundings were just falling apart. All the brothels and pubs were thriving because people started partying literally like there was no tomorrow because they were gonna die. They were just going for it. “Dance Macabre” is capturing that joyous nocturnal sort of life in a disco song.
Sources: PopMatters, The Guardian, The Diamondback, The Line of Best Fit, Revolver
