We present you the list 11 most popular songs about death where you will discover that relationship between music and death can have many different faces. Some singers use music to overcome the pain of losing loved ones, for others singing about death is an attempt to find peace with human mortality. In the same lyrics, you will find the fear of dying and hope that final reunion is possible in an afterlife. Authors who find a glimpse of hope, stand side by side with those whose lyrics are filled with nihilism. In some songs, death is an impulse to appreciate the life here and now, in others, it is nothing more but the end of struggles.
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It is hard to sing about death without mentioning God. In these songs God is a savior, judge, one who offers forgiveness and solace, final instance to turn to. Like death, God can have different faces as you can see on our list 11 Most Popular Songs about God.
To make the ranking of most popular songs about death we used Billboard list of best songs about death. First, we’ve ranked the songs by following criteria – song’s place on Billboard Hot 100 and the album place on Billboard 200. If a song/album was first on the chart, it got 100 points, and for each lower position, we subtract a point. For instance, if the song was in fourth place, it got 97 points. We also used as a criteria number of weeks that song/album spent on Hot 100/ Billboard 200 – for every week song/album received one point. Another point was added for every millionth view on YouTube. And finally, a song received extra points if it was covered – one point for every cover we could find. We added up all these points and got final score by which we ranked the songs. You will notice that some songs have two equally popular versions. For instance, Marley’s and Clapton’s performances of I Shoot the Sheriff are equally popular. In cases like this, we totaled up the overall scores of both versions. And now let’s see which songs entered the list.
