Funeral Songs Touch Me in the Mourning

Earl Fowler

As the fabulous Fran Lebowitz has observed, it was way more fun to be in one’s twenties in the seventies than in one’s seventies in the twenties.

Back then, it was the weddings of friends and relatives for which we donned dark suits or tuxedos, full-length dresses and high heels.

Today, the lecterns have turned and we find ourselves regularly reshining our shoes (ooh, my heels are killing me) for a sobering round of funerals, memorials, interments, entombments, cremations, wakes, vigils, obsequies, exequies, sepultures and celebrations of life.

To help set the mood, at least at ostensibly Christian consignments, one still hears some of the old standards like “Amazing Grace” or “The Old Rugged Cross” or “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

Sorry, don’t know how that last one sneaked in there. That should have read “Softly and Tenderly, Jesus Is Calling.” Damn your eyes, autocorrection! At least I managed to delete “Highway to Hell” before any damage was done.

The point is, I’m sure we’ve all noticed a trend toward offering more secular solace in this increasingly laical age.

For rousing baby boomer sendoffs, such chestnuts as “Let it Be” or “Bridge over Troubled Water” have become as ubiquitous as, I dunno, “Morning Has Broken” and “Stairway to Heaven.”

Sometimes the choices are a bit of a head-scratcher.

For example, I’ve been to a couple of affairs where Céline Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” was the show stopper. But if the song’s premise were true, we dearly beloved were clearly gathered there under fraudulent circumstances. Why not “I’m Still Standing” or “I Will Survive”?

Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” sounds like exactly the opposite of what’s about to go down. Swing low, sweet chariot.

A funeral featuring Nino Rota’s “A Time For Us” seemed especially off key and out of tune. That time had passed. If you don’t know me by now, you will never, never, never know me (no you won’t) ooh my heels are killing me.

You likely will have noticed that some of the recently departed and/or the loved ones who choose their parting fare have started to inject more of a party atmosphere into these fond farewells and sensational shindigs. Shake a leg, everyone!

When I asked about it, a “chapel of rest” employee mentioned that Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” and Eric Idle’s Monty Python classic, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life,” are as commonplace today as “When the Saints Go Marching In” or “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead.”

Frigging autocorrect! That last one should have read “the theme from Happy Days.”

But it seems to me that if you really want to go out in style, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” or “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” will no longer make a lasting impression in the face of all this increasing competition as everyone ups their down game.

Woody Allen’s use of singing and dancing ghosts, springing from their coffins as the tune “Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think)” unspools in the 1996 musical comedy Everyone Says I Love You, was as uplifting as it gets. Hey, you’re only dead once.

Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink. The years go by, as quickly as you wink. Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.

And with that spirit in mind, here’s a Top 10 list of inappropriate, bat-out-of-hell funeral songs sure to leave them squirming in the aisles when they’re coming to take you away ho ho, hee hee, ha ha:

10. “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. Ah, ah, ah, ah.

9. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-go” by Wham! Jitterbug, jitterbug, jitterbug, jitterbug.

8. “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. Ol’ Beelzebub is about to meet his match.

7. “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas. Only not by Kansas. Go with the Will Ferrell version from Old School. You’re my boy, Blue!

6. “A Little Less Conversation” by Elvis Presley. ’Nuff said. (Bonus B track: “Return to Sender.”)

5. “Jump” by Van Halen. Go ahead and jump. Oh. Never mind. (Also, since you might be feeling kind of seasick, maybe skip the light fandango and turning cartwheels across the floor.)

4. “Cold as Ice” by Foreigner. You want paradise. This is the day you’ll pay the price, I know.

3. This suitable-for-cremation selection is a five-part medley: “Light My Fire” by the Doors, “Great Balls of Fire” by Jerry Lee Lewis, “Burning Down the House” by the Talking Heads, “The Heat is On” by Glenn Frey, and “Disco Inferno” by the Trammps. (Burn, baby burn) burn that mother down.

2. “See You Later, Alligator” by Bill Haley & His Comets. After while, crocodile.

1. “Pop! Goes the Weasel” by Barney the Dinosaur. (For special jack-in-the-box effect and to build excruciating suspense, have minister/priest/rabbi/imam turn crank affixed to casket while melody plays. Extra points if you can arrange for an ice cream truck to arrive simultaneously.)