“And if a ten ton truck/ kills the both of us/ to die by your side/ the pleasure and the privilege is mine.”
– “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” by the Smiths

“Heartwarming” isn’t the right word, but there’s a certain triumphant feeling that comes from a really catchy pop tune about death. It takes that tension between happy music and sad text that made stuff like the Supremes not just great but also interesting, and turning it up to 11. We’re not just whistling past the graveyard here, folks. For a moment we’re figuratively staring down that great shadow of mortality that haunts all our days, grinning and flipping him the bird. And in more than a few cases, the songs also have something to say about life, why it’s essential to embrace it.

The morose/poppy thing resonates with me personally because I’ve been troubled by panic attack-level heebie jeebies ever since childhood whenever my mind strays to contemplations of the big nothing for too long. Despite a good Catholic upbringing, I just can’t get my head around the concept of an end to this life we know. And the prospect, revealing probably my lack of faith, that my soul and identity will just come to a screeching halt, oblivion… it’s horrible, and it opens up this awful chasm before me that is beyond my courage.

So I’d like to talk briefly about a few of my favorite pop songs about death of the past few years.

Sam “Puffy” Coomes, the main songwriter for Quasi, has put together a body of work betraying a preoccupation with the comically morbid. On “My Coffin” from 1997’s R & B Transmogrification, he opens up with some distorted keyboard noodlings before settling into a plodding oom-pah beat as his co-conspirator Janet “Rocky Horror” Weiss does her Ringo thing. Within the first verse he’s already confessed, “I can hardly wait until the day that I should die” and “One day I shall die and I should hope it won’t be long” in a light sing-song. Some fittingly funerary brass kicks in during the break and then bleats along to the next verse. Things eventually open up, though. By around 3:27 the keyboard and drums have ground to a halt, only to give way to a totally Harrison-worthy slide guitar coda that sounds kind of… hopeful? Like maybe there’s something good afterward?

The real trick here, and it’s not unique or original, is that you can’t take the lyrics at face value. Coomes is singing in the voice of a guy who spends his life polishing his coffin, looking forward to his demise. Who’s really taking this guy seriously, or finding real value in his point of view? His life has become a big zero because his thoughts of death have overcome the very act of living a life. And eureka, we have a lesson to learn for our panicky necrophobe.

Sean Na Na’s “Princess and the Pony” (from a 1999 split EP with Mary Lou Lord) skips the funerary vibe altogether. It sounds like a party. Strummy acoustic guitar and thrumming New Wave-ish bass propel the song, and hand claps and backup “ba-ba ba-da ba’s” punctuate it. While the verses bemoan the low-rent lifestyle and user girlfriends, the chorus gets to just this point — “How many of you will be left to make the scene/ at my funeral party?” Giddy, desperate and hilarious, Na Na principal Sean Tillman spins out the details: whiskey flasks, forty-ounce bottles, volleyball and a DJ, so all in attendance can “shake your ass around my casket.” This song begs to be replayed as soon as it stops, not analyzed, but if you again peel back the dark humor, there’s an affirmation there. The narrator is daring his friends to drop their deadlier habits and be there to outlive him, then celebrate his life.

Not quite so friendly are the Minus 5 on “Your Day Will Come,” the closer on last year’s Let the War Against Music Begin. Over a pounding piano playing up a 50’s doo wop/soul chord progression, they promise on the chorus, “I don’t care if you’re beautiful and young/ your day will come.” As is often the case on Minus 5 songs, there’s also that one anachronistic element, in this case a mellotron line interwoven with an e-bowed guitar that lends the song some added dreaminess. This is wonderful stuff, if ultimately working within a standard framework skewed mainly by the lyrical content.

This time there’s nothing to dig out of it, because the ominous promise of death’s kiss is actually played against young folks carpe-ing their diem (”you sing in the rain and you run in the sun”). Instead, it’s just some mean-spirited fun given an extra kick by a surrealist monologue by Robyn Hitchcock that runs from around 3:15 to the song’s end four minutes later as the band vamps. While long songs are generally not to be encouraged, a touch of Hitchcock’s genius is never out of place. “God’s intestines”? “Mixolydian coastline”? What’s he on about? There is no point, as some argue is the case in life and death, which is as close to a message as one can glean from the jokey ending.

These little perversions may be a strange place to find comfort, but then again I’ll be listening to just the right song about plane crashes as I fly coast to coast tonight.

Links:
http://www.epitonic.com/artists/quasi.html
http://www.seannana.com/
http://mammoth.go.com/minus5_youngfreshfellows/