Muristek
It’s your party and they’ll cry if you want them to: the lost art of picking funeral songs
Don’t let your big sendoff be a write-off: confronting our inevitable fate allows us to sign off with a defining DJ set – and avoid any unwanted Lewis Capaldi
We’ve all been known to freeze on being handed the aux cord and told to play a song, any song. The crowd is expectant, the floor is yours: get it right, and it will be the ultimate mic drop, the perfect exit music. Choose wrong and, well – it’s your funeral.
In some ways, death occasions your defining DJ set, the ultimate exit music: choosing a song to go out to. At 31 years old, without dependents or assets, the only thought I’ve given to my passing is the question of what music I want played at the funeral – and I have given long and careful consideration. I started curating my playlist in 2018, the year that I became eligible for the so-called 27 Club, after reporting on the trend for non-traditional, highly personalised sendoffs. The thought of forcing my bereft family to sift through my teenage CDs and Spotify account was too much to bear – not least because, addled by grief, they would inevitably get it wrong. I imagined them reaching for the first cassingle I ever bought, Viva La Radio by Lolly, in tearful consensus: “How she loved to hear this.”
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