Songs for the Death.

[Bored Of Education]

With Black Star and, perhaps, The Next Day now appearing to be written with Bowie knowing about his imminent demise, it has got me to thinking what other albums have been written in such circumstances and the one(s) that spring to mind with me are the 'American' album(s) that Johnny Cash recorded with Rick Rubin. The mood of those albums and choice of sings were perfect for the age and condition of Cash and somewhat eased us fans into his imminent death. Like Bowie, Cash seemed to be revelling and almost inspired (if that is the word) by his life ending.

Rogin alludes to Queen's 'Made in Heaven' which, while I haven't heard, the song titles such as "Let Me Live", "My Life Has Been Saved", "Heaven for Everyone" and "Too Much Love Will Kill You" suggest that Freddie Mercury was ploughing a similarly morbid furrow.

I wonder if we are getting it more now that artists are possibly living longer or that medical science is advanced enough that people are knowing well in advance that they are dying. It used to be that it was "live fast, die young" and "Hope I die before I get old" to superannuated acts still touring to acts using their dying days, months or years to chronicle this experience in the same way that they chronicle other parts of their life.

[Jah Womble]

Songs for the Death.

A whole different ball game, I know, but Closer perhaps counts...

[Bored Of Education]

Songs for the Death.

Interesting you say that as I was pondering (and forgot to add) whether The Holy Bible could be counted as that sort of album but, with the odd circumstances surrounding Richey's disappearance, I wasn't sure it was apt.

[Jah Womble]

Songs for the Death.

Hmm, it'd probably feature a little further along the extended arm that I've created. As perhaps might In Utero.

[evilC]

Songs for the Death.

Jacques Brel's 'Brel' (AKA 'Les Marquises')?

[Cal Alamein]

Songs for the Death.

Warren Zevon - The Wind

Great album - love the cover.

[linus]

Songs for the Death.

Bob Marley's might have written his last album Uprising while terminally ill.

[3 Colours Red]

Songs for the Death.

Made In Heaven of course continues the basic theme of Innuendo having more than a few allusions itself regarding Freddie knowing he didn't have that much more time left.

[Wouter D]

Songs for the Death.

Rudimental - New Day

Last track featuring Bobby Womack. Lyrics look like he knew it.

[Beatle Simon]

Songs for the Death.

Totally opposite to this thread, but John Lennon's last single release was '(Just Like) Starting Over.'

[Various Artist]

Songs for the Death.

I think Lennon might have been a teensy bit more surprised by his impending demise, to be fair.

The Queen ones are a good example, although not strictly Freddie Mercury's own choice as he didn't write all (or most, possibly) of them, and I believe the likes of Let Me Live and Too Much Love Will Kill You originated a few years before the sessions that produced Innuendo and the new parts of Made In Heaven. That said, his bandmates knew about his illness for several years, so those songs quite possibly reference it anyway. The later ones are definitely indicative of the band coping with his downhill slide and preparing for his end, though. I've seen documentaries about him where Brian May has described his trepidation about bringing songs such as Innuendo's These Are The Days Of Our Lives and The Show Must Go On to Mercury, knowing full well that they were barely disguisedly confronting the subject. His singer, of course, would just down another drink and go for it full-bloodedly.

Innuendo as an album is probably a better fit for this thread, in that is was made, er, prehumously (?), whereas Made In Heaven was pieced together some time afterward so its themes are, at least in part, imposed after the fact. Still particularly affecting though is Mother Love, written by Mercury and May, which was Mercury's last, unfinished vocal – hence May sings the last verse (Freddie told him he had to go and have a rest before he could "return later and finish it"), before it spirals into a coda that sounds like time running backwards, accelerating snatches of songs interspersed with Mercury leading the call-and-response at Wembley Stadium, the overture of One Vision, him singing the chorus of Dusty Springfield's Going Back (which I believe he recorded pre-Queen in the early '70s) and finally a baby crying.

I'm trying to think now if I own any other artist's final album. I've got Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around, which was the last released before his death, though the waters have been muddied since by a further two volumes of American Recordings recordings, so to speak. The Cash-penned title track quotes the Book of Revelation, in his version of Danny Boy "the pipes, the pipes are calling" of course, and even Personal Jesus takes on a very different air in this setting. The careworn covers of Hurt, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, In My Life and Bridge Over Troubled Water seem to speak of regret, nostalgia and a desire to keep on keeping the promises once made, and it all ends with We'll Meet Again.

[MsD]

Songs for the Death.

Jeff Buckley's Grace sounds full of portents of death "my time coming ... I'm not afraid to die .." "It reminds me of the pain I might leave behind" "I couldn't escape from the nightmare that pulled me in and sucked me under" (from memory .. I stopped listening to it a few years ago). But he recorded many other tracks before his death, if not a complete album.

[Squarewheelbike]

Songs for the Death.

Guessing a lot of the 80's/90's output of Cave/McGowan/ E Smith were made with one eye on the grim reaper!

[evilC]

Songs for the Death.

And no-one's mentioned Joy Division's 'Closer' yet, I believe.

Reading the lyrics back, now, you'd have to say he knew ...and that he knew how it all would end. Maybe not exactly when, but he knew his own demise was within him.

[evilC]

Songs for the Death.

Similarly with Dennis Wilson's 'Pacific Ocean Blue'. It would be over six years before Wilson died, but at the time he made that album, his health was allegedly already failing, due to his excesses.

[Various Artist]

Songs for the Death.

Check the second post in the thread Clive

Good points though; I own both Grace and Closer, either of which one could read a lot into if one were inclined.

[Squarewheelbike]

Songs for the Death.

evilC wrote: And no-one's mentioned Joy Division's 'Closer' yet, I believe.

Reading the lyrics back, now, you'd have to say he knew ...and that he knew how it all would end. Maybe not exactly when, but he knew his own demise was within him.

Erm, second post in!

[evilC]

Songs for the Death.

Squarewheelbike wrote:

And no-one's mentioned Joy Division's 'Closer' yet, I believe.

Reading the lyrics back, now, you'd have to say he knew ...and that he knew how it all would end. Maybe not exactly when, but he knew his own demise was within him.

Erm, second post in!

Ah! Okay! :-)

[Land Waster]

Songs for the Death.

REM's Automatic for the People.

A red herring, you could say, since it was widely believed at the time that Michael Stipe was at death's door. Quite a few of the songs on that album have that kind of atmosphere.

Yet, he is still with us, thankfully.

[Satchmo Distel]

Songs for the Death.

Many classical examples, most obviously Mozart's Requiem

Nick Drake's Pink Moon, and the earlier track Fruit Tree

Robert Johnson's trip to the Crossroads

The gospel song All My Trials

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Songs for the Death.

This is hard to listen to now

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Songs for the Death.

Mind you, so is this, which was recorded six years earlier ... oh.

[Beatle Simon]

Songs for the Death.

Velvet Human wrote: I think Lennon might have been a teensy bit more surprised by his impending demise, to be fair.

Although he did tell guitarist Jeese Ed Davis that he would 'come to a sticky end.'

[Jah Womble]

Songs for the Death.

...and told at least one interviewer some while before that he'd "probably be popped off by some loony".

[MsD]

Songs for the Death.

From Billy MacKenzie's Beyond the Sun:

I read it in the sand
You'll come for me
And take me by the hand
Far from all I know
You'll take me there
And I will understand

It's quite downbeat, but then a lot of his work was melancholy. His version of Gloomy Sunday is unbearably sad. I blasted it out when my cat (named Billy after Mr Mackenzie) died in 2014 and felt like topping myself.