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Dearest Death: a songlist

skinny

skinny

Nigh
Joined
May 30, 2010
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Death is interesting to Forteans. No denying it. Don't despair until you've heard the story through. These tracks actually kept us alive at varied points in our youth and as adults. There's always hope. Life endures beyond hope sometimes. These songs tell tales long and true of folk who faced the horror and ... well ... sometimes they topped themselves, but for the most part they just sang about thinking about death and then plugged on. This is depressing to the depressive, so back out if that's likely to turn you down. Otherwise, indulge and wallow as we explore themes in music that confront the ultimate what if.

1. Sinking ~ The Cure

2. Metallica ~ Fade To Black

3. The Eternal ~ Joy Division

4. Asleep ~ The Smiths

5. In My Time of Dying ~ Led Zeppelin

6. Country Death Song ~ Violent Femmes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHukDe9wHxw
 
Gloomy Sunday aka The Hungarian Suicide Song was blamed for a series of suicides after people listened to it, the author of the song also topped himself. It was even banned from broadcast by the BBC for a long time ..

If you're feeling brave (or stupid), the haunted song ...


A short documentary about it ...


A Seven year old does a cover version of it and people start crying in the audience.

 
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All way too cheerful so far. Try this one:

Wolf's Michelangelo Lieder: No.2.

We were human beings also
Happy and sad just like you,

And now we are lifeless here,
Are only earth as you can see.

One of the last things Hugo Wolf wrote; ahead of him lay five years in an asylum before his death in 1903.


It's the sort of thing that Radio 3 would broadcast if we were waiting for the bombs to arrive! :cry:
 
Well, you beat me to one Smiths song, so how about this...


All we need is our very own Superstar DJ, Carlos, to make us all a mix tape!
 
Everyone on Death's Dance-floor for the Mahler:

In this weather, in this windy storm,
I would never have sent the children out.
They have been carried off,
I wasn't able to warn them!

Songs on the Death of Children. :cry::cry::cry:


The good news is that Mahler chose to set just five of Rückert's poems. The grieving but industrious poet had written 428 poems on the subject as private therapy for his broken heart.

Excerpts from Wikipedia:

"Such tragedy was familiar to Mahler - eight of his siblings died during their childhood

"In 1904, when Mahler resumed the composition of the interrupted work, it was only two weeks after the birth of his own second child, upsetting his wife who "found it incomprehensible and feared Mahler was tempting Providence."

"Alma's fears proved all too prescient, as four years after the work had been completed the Mahlers' daughter Maria, aged four, died of scarlet fever*."

*The same illness had carried off two of Rückert's children and given rise to the poems.
 
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People have always found or thought The Smiths music depressing because they haven't listened closely enough ... they dealt with dark matters using slow grinding guitars & moody pouting expressions. The song 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now' understandably isn't going to win any points on potential uplifting possibilities ( I've just managed to write the word possibilities without a spell check alert :)) . Morrisey always sang in a wailing whining tone but to be fair, his lyrics were often humorous and uplifting. Who wouldn't want to reel around a fountain or tell the boss to fuck off ? ..

 
I had thought this was a thread about what music people want for their funeral. Me, I am going to say "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini", just for the fun of it!
 
Father Ted knows that the antidote for all this is the theme from "Shaft."
 
A Jaques Brel song that's been covered many times, here performed by the godstar* David Bowie:


* Godstar was an idea Genesis P_orridge ooked up as the next step up from a superstar and a megastar, only you have to be dead to get the title.
 
Cohen namechecks Gloomy Sunday in his intro to this song, about planning to end your own life and then finding you can't quite follow through...

 
And more Cohen, the whole track is just a long list of ways to check out:


Coil covered that too...
 
Coastaljames said:
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Every time anyone asks me a question to which my answer is affirmative, they get Yes! We have no bananas!

The song was playing on a wind-up gramophone when the late David Niven lost his virginity to a friendly London working girl.
 
One of my favourites. And the only thing I could imagine I'd want playing at my funeral. With nobody there to hear it.
 
The album cover was done to spoof many popular albums of the time, the inside of it had a slight longer shot of the cover pic, revealing a naked woman's body on the ground in front of them!

 
OneWingedBird said:
...the inside of it had a slight longer shot of the cover pic, revealing a naked woman's body on the ground in front of them!
Click to expand...

A man in fact. A dead and naked male. Considering where the cover photo was taken presumably a reference to it's rather macabre history.
 
OneWingedBird said:
Inevitably I was going to post something by these guys
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Awesome. Was having my mind blown by "Ape of Naples" only last night. Incredible album as most of theirs are. True English bohemian travellers of the soul.
 
Coastaljames said:
A man in fact. A dead and naked male. Considering where the cover photo was taken presumably a reference to it's rather macabre history.
Click to expand...

Just googled that and yup, it's rather definitely a bloke.
 
Time to lower the tone I think, and to prove 'Scarg's Law - the longer a thread gets, the chances of it morphing into Weird Sex approaches 1.


And this jolly ditty about a corpse he keeps in the fridge to shag

 
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