Your song to be cremated to

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I've been giving this some thought, ever since I turned 49 and so have received about 20 different offers in the last week for "over 50 funeral life plans", including one personally signed by Carol Vorderman.

I genuinely want "Where the Streets Have No Name" by U2.

1. It's one of my favourite songs.
2. It's got a nice long intro for that bit where you go through the curtains.
3. Lyrics - "I want to reach out and touch the flame"; ""still building then burning down love"

(that'll have them chuckling in the congregation)

"high on a desert plain, where the streets have no name"

"(Our love turned to dust) I'm being blown by the wind ... blown by the wind. And when I go there, I go there with you... it's all I can do"

(A little tear from Signora Rogin as she stuffs the life assurance policies back into her handbag as she realises people are looking at her)

I think it's perfect. What would be yours?

[tee rex]

Springsteen - I'm on Fire.

[Greenlander]

Tucked into my will is a list with my cremation soundtrack on it plus details of where to find each track. Every so often I change it, but the big song is, and always has been, Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen.

I did have a disk at one point so Mrs G didn't have to go to the trouble of compiling it, but in these days of Spotify she'll be right. Mind you she reckons I'll outlast her.

[Nefertiti2]

Needs to go in the music thread, surely....

[Benjm]

My recent experience of funerals is that crematoria run to quite tight schedules, particularly when busy.

To avoid your musical choices being cut off in their prime, drop any slow building 12" mixes and think more along the lines of Velocity Girl or something by the Ramones.

[Uncle Ethan]

Highway to Hell

[Nurse Duckett]

The Doors - Light My Fire

[3 Colours Red]

Disco Inferno - facetious to the last.

[Third rate Leszno]

Either Into the night by Raveonettes or Taillights Fade by Buffalo Tom.

[elguapo4]

I have absolutely no interest in my own funeral. If whoever's left puts me out with my feet sticking out of the bin, it's all the same to me.

[WOM]

At the appropriate time, congregants will be asked to open their lyric sheets...<and two .. three .. four>

"There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple too
And up in the nursery an absurd little bird
Is popping out to say "cuckoo"…"

[Sporting]

I have absolutely no interest in my own funeral. If whoever's left puts me out with my feet sticking out of the bin, it's all the same to me.

This

[Mr Delicieux]

The theme tune to Van der Valk.
As it begins to play, I hope it's jauntiness puts a smile or two on people's faces, but they won't know that the fun has only just begun.
When the second verse kicks in, the pulleys attached to my arms and legs are activated, and I come flying out of the coffin, lifting me high up into the air before landing back in the coffin, but stood upright. My friends who have been tasked with doing this then proceed to get me to dance in time to the song, before it reaches the end, and I am solemnly lowered back into the casket ready for my well-earned eternal slumber.

Once back in the coffin, it will then explode, killing everybody within a 50 metre radius.

[DPDPDPDP]

The acoustic version of Reflections of My Life by Dean Ford, lead singer of Marmalade.

[Amor de Cosmos]

We've done this before. I'm pretty sure I included: All Tomorrow's Parties by The Velvet Underground, Who Knows Where the Time Goes by Fairport Convention, and Hoagy Carmichael singing Stardust. So I'll stick with them. In reality it won't be my choice anyway.

[hobbes]

Faith by The Cure. I want everyone to be good and fucking miserable.

[Fussbudget]

If we're just doing joke suggestions (hard to tell), you can take your pick from the trillion dance records built around the 'you got me burning up' sample from Love Sensation - I'd go with this classic

The acoustic version of Reflections of My Life by Dean Ford, lead singer of Marmalade.

Not wishing to take the piss out of a song dear to your heart, but the lyrics to this are so over the top miserable that it makes me laugh every time I hear it. The bit where he sings about how the world is a terrible place but he doesn't want to die is one of the most eeyorish things I've ever heard

[Sits]

As they're walking in Have I told You Lately by Van the Man, because Mrs. S will like it.

And as the rollers turn and the curtains close I think it would have to be Sparky's Dream by Teenage Fanclub. The intro will break the gloom, and the song will make everything a bit more celebratory. Plus it's one of my favourite songs ever, and it finally forces the family to realise that a lot of Dad's Crap Music is actually fantastic, and he was right all along.

[RobM]

I'm thinking that with my aorta going and getting replaced with various parts dacron, titanium and whatever they sew it up with what's left, when I eventually go, might still be of use to the horsepital to gauge how things held up before I went or indeed didn't hold up and sent me under.

That being the case I likely won't be having a funeral. If the custom is to still give my kinfolk a cadaver after they've played with it anything by The Cramps probably fits.

I like Johnny Appleseed by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros though if there's a memorial service.

Least I could do, given me six years I wouldn't have had without the op and the surgeon's skill and looking to get a good few more.

[Jah Womble]

Lux Prima by Karen O & Dangermouse. Or the theme tune to Walking with Dinosaurs.

Faith by The Cure. I want everyone to be good and fucking miserable.

The whole album?

[The_Purple_Cow]

Since the start of the pandemic my sons have been obsessed with my funeral wishes. TBH, I don't really know what to tell them, as long as it doesn't cost too much I don't care what they do. My grandad always used to say when someone dies you should just call the council and say "we've got a body here for disposal" and then they would turn up in a lorry and cart it away a local tip. So imagine my disappointment when they gave him a full on funeral with flowers the music the fancy coffin - the works. I know funerals are about the loved ones not the dead bloke, but I think some notice of their wishes should be made.

There is a company that does minimalist burials where there is no processes made to the dead body, they just put you in a cardboard coffin and bury you out n the middle of nowhere somewhere. I should look them up before it's too late.

[gavc23]

Ancient Rome had a guild of professional mourners the family could hire for funerals, the amount of wailing and rending of garments would be commensurate to the amount paid. Once the service was over they would tidy themselves up and move to the next ceremony.

Oh and Goodnight by Cheap Trick, the live at Budokan version.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I won't tell my kids my real funeral playlist and keep telling them I'm going to make them sit through the full length version of Mogwai Fear Satan, but my daughter knows it'll really be "that song by Frightened Rabbit" (by which she means Head Rolls Off).

[Toby Gymshorts]

On the way into any service there may be, probably this:

then for the main event, this:

The above said, I've always said I want my disposal to be as low-key as possible; no grand gestures, just goodbye. I'm a curious sort of soppy git, really.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Bit of a tricky one, the old music at cremations lark.

When my mum died I suggested Please Release Me, which was her favourite song, but it was overruled due to the lyrical content (a love gone cold) and because it would have wrecked half of the mourners.

My dad went into the furnace to the strains of Bring Me Sunshine, which I hope he would have appreciated.