Every now and again I stumble across an article about the music that people choose to have played at their funeral. Some choices are surprising but I suppose, in today’s self-centred society, people want to go out with as big a bang as possible and leave something behind that their friends can talk about afterward: “Did you hear what whatsisname had played at his funeral?” Who could resist a challenge like that?
I’d read somewhere that the most popular song at UK funerals was “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” by Monty Python but this week it seems that it has been superseded by “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. What an arrogant, self-indulgent, self-serving travesty of a song that is. You might think you lived your life your way but only if you included the proviso ‘as limited by the laws of the land and the expectations of polite society’.
Other funeral favourites are “Time to Say Goodbye” by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Boccelli, and “Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler, not forgetting ACDC’s “Highway to Hell” and Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” for the non-conformists.
I don’t know what I would like. Monty Python appeals because it’s just bizarre enough to be interesting but maybe it’s been done to death (boom boom!). Something self-effacing like Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” has its attractions. It would be nice to leave people scratching their heads and saying, ‘What was he thinking?’
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