The Pop Corporation

Choosing what music you’d have played at your funeral is a fun game, if you’re the kind of person who likes making arbitrary lists of tunes while you’re sat on the sofa or down the pub. If you’re reading about music for no good reason, chances are you’re one of those people.

So what do you do? Do you go funny? Do you want to devastate everyone and bring them to their knees with emotional upset? Or are you just leaving it to loved ones, because who cares? There’s no afterlife, and you’ll be dead and you just hope everyone gets drunk at the wake.

Whatever your thoughts, the Co-op do funerals, and they know all about the most popular songs which are played as people join the invisible choir/descend below.

The Co-op have released a Top Ten of these songs, and for the hell of it, let’s review them.

1. Time to Say Goodbye – Andrea Bocelli, Sarah Brightman

A very on-the-nose choice, message wise. It’s a very melodramatic mic drop. “See you later then”, but sung in Italian, so it sounds a bit grand, what with it being opera. While an emotionally stirring piece, it’s a bit like having a gold bathroom set – like, it’s fancy, but it’s definitely the place you have a shit.

So hyping your own demise up with some opera is a bit much. We decided to translate the lyrics into English, and it says “and words are missing, yes, I know there is no light in a room when the sun is missing if you’re not there with me…”, which is a bit much, no? Like, someone’s got designs on themselves, right?

2. My Way – Frank Sinatra

Ah, the taxi driver’s choice of exit – the song that says “I may not have been perfect, but no-one can say I didn’t leave a mark in their life.” Of course, to gaslight the congregation, the opening line of “and now the end is near, and so I face my final curtain” is designed to leave everyone under no illusion that someone’s died. And almost certainly always a man.

The slings and arrows of life thrown at someone who has probably been chided by a younger relative to being politically incorrect, a defiant laugh at the face of the Grim Reaper, and a nod to the times when he danced around at a wedding in a trilby. All that given, it’s a superb choice for a funeral and it deserved to become a death cliche.

3. Somewhere Over The Rainbow – Eva Cassidy

Everyone has an auntie that was very mildly alternative. Not alternative enough to have a great record collection and a load of books you could borrow – rather, she wore flowy, thin trousers from a holiday in the South of France a decade ago, and was a bit too into fruit teas.

No-one was sure what her job was, but given the size of her house, it seemed to pay well. A nice lady who, if she’d lived longer, could’ve fully traversed the crunchy pipeline into mild transphobia, leaving everyone confused with how to approach her. The choice of Eva Cassidy’s ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ is a perfect choice – somehow both wistful and yearning for a simpler, hippier time, and also, a bazillion selling corporate juggernaut of a track.

And to think – all that pension money and house sale cash, is going to the Cat’s Protection charity. Shame.

4. You’ll Never Walk Alone – Gerry & The Pacemakers

There’s a lot of Liverpool FC fans in the world, and you’ll know this because the absolute first chance they get, they’ll tell you, regardless of whether you’re talking about football or not. Liverpool isn’t England either, okay?

Naturally, death isn’t safe from them letting everyone know one last time, that they supported Liverpool FC. The sound of the song, while a touching sentiment and genuinely one of football’s miracles when heard from The Kop, will come as sweet relief, as Uncle Ken will no longer be ringing people up pissed around 8pm on a Saturday night, bellowing about the difference between Klopp’s pressing of everyone’s gegens, and Arne Slotball. Rest easy Ken, you mad bastard you.

5. The Best – Tina Turner

A strangely upbeat number for a parting shot, Tina’s anthem has since been co-opted by Rangers fans, which is a shame. It’s interesting to think of someone grieving a loss of a loved one, suddenly thinking about Tina Turner’s incredible legs, strutting across a stage in those vicious hi-heels.

While “I can feel you even when I’m alone – oh baby, don’t let go” is a scrambling at the dirt of someone’s graveside of a line, you wonder how Edgar Winter’s sax solo (yes, that Edgar Winter) sounds bouncing off the ceiling of a crematorium in some rainy provincial town. Pretty good, probably, because Tina Turner sounds great wherever she erupts.

6. Supermarket Flowers – Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran’s ruthless ambition to be the biggest songwriter in the universe is as grotesque as it is admirable. He’s competitive, and not shy of that fact. So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he’s got funeral song in the bag to file next to his Irish One, his Afrobeats One, his First Dance One, etc.

In an interview, Sheeran said that the song was about his grandma. He said: “She was in a hospital near my house where I was making the album so I saw her quite a lot while making the album and she passed away while I was in the studio. So that’s my first reaction for anything that happens to me, good or bad, pick up a guitar,” adding that the track was literally designed to “really make you cry”.

Grotesque and admirable, like we said.

7. Wind Beneath My Wings – Bette Midler

Telling someone “Did I ever tell you, you’re my hero?” reeks of a relationship that failed to tell each other nice things during the alive years, so the least you can do is send them off with Bette belting one out on your behalf.

As Bette’s version (there’s others, but this is the famous one) is from ‘Beaches’ which makes everyone cry, this is a double-whammy of a funeral banger, which is undeniable.

8. Abide With Me (hymn)

The thinking man’s football funeral choice. Non-partisan, as it is sung at every FA Cup final regardless of who is playing. Now, the recently deceased may not have been a fan of the beautiful game so much that they needed a football based song at their funeral, but rather, it might be the only hymn anyone can remember anyone having an opinion of, save for some drunken chats with old school mates about the ones from Come And Praise.

The best part is that everyone knows the words. They go something along the lines of: “Aaaaabide with me, oh mmmmhmm hmmm mmhhmm mhmm… mmmm mmmhmm mmmhhm mmmhoh lord, abiiiide wiiiith meee.”

9. We’ll Meet Again – Vera Lynn

A solid banger for those who think there’s life after death. And we’ll meet again “some sunny day” is a lovely picture of two loved ones in angel gear, gambolling on some clouds in a baby blue sky. Of course, Vera Lynn is synonymous with World War II, so hopefully, we don’t see these clouds pierced by Luftwaffe jets from zose pesky Nazis.

During the Cold War, this song was included in the package of things held in 20 underground radio stations of the BBC’s Wartime Broadcasting Service to boost morale for 100 days after a nuclear attack. That’s some legacy isn’t it?

10. You Raise Me Up – Westlife

You know what pulls at the heartstrings like nowt else? A bunch of clean cut Irish lads in linen shirts singing a hymnal that was also done by the most wholesome of boys, Josh Groban. Absolute emotional gold.

The placement of the ‘oh‘ in “when I am down and, oh, my soul so weary” sounds really fancy doesn’t it?

You can picture some emotionally repressed guy, belting it out in a half-empty karaoke bar, ending with “that’s for you, nan” and honestly, it’s an image that works. Seven pints of stout, arm in arm, thinking about those you’ve lost, in a song that isn’t actually about loss, but sounds a bit Jesusy and that’ll do.