Oh, Your Hair is Beautiful! Choosing Music For Darren’s Celebration and Cremation

One of the things Darren and I never put a great deal of thought into was what music we would have at our funerals. Why would we?

Maybe if we were having a drink, having a laugh and chatting about music, we would talk about a song we would want played at our funeral. But we were never really thinking beyond that. We certainly never thought about either of us having to go to the other one’s funeral.

That’s why we had both sort of picked Nick Cave’s The Ship Song, which I’ve written about before. Darren got there before me by passing away first. Sorry, my dry humour.

Darren was 52. He wasn’t ill. There was absolutely no reason to think this was a conversation we needed to have. Then suddenly he had passed away and, within days, I had to organise a celebration for him. That also meant picking the songs to go along with it.

I mean, it’s a bit crazy when you think about it. You have to come up with songs that are fitting and that somehow represent him, all within a very short period of time.

Your head is completely screwed, and the last thing you need to be doing is going through the discographies of all the bands he loved, asking yourself:

What music do I want to play?

What songs represent him?

What fits?

Choosing Music That Represented Darren

Obviously, we weren’t going to go for traditional funeral songs. I don’t know, Abide with Me or other songs people play just because they are funeral songs. There was music that we loved, and it was more important to represent that side of Darren. I had to think:

What bands are him?

What songs are his?

What represents him?

The hard part is that your brain is still screwed up. You’re living right in the centre of trauma, and it’s very, very hard to think of even the most obvious things. You barely remember your own name.

When we spoke to Richard, the celebrant, we worked out that we would have four songs as part of Darren’s celebration. Daniel was also going to sing. He had planned to sing one song, but he actually sang two.

But where do you start? What do you pick?

I knew Darren loved The Doors. He loved The Lemonheads and so many other bands. But I was trying to think back to the man I met in 1993 and the bands he went on and on about. I felt the music needed to represent that youthful side of him.

The Doors: Touch Me

I started with The Doors and went through their songs. There are so many brilliant songs, but at the same time, they aren’t necessarily all the right thing to have someone remembered by. I’m laughing at the thought of putting on something like The End. Darren would probably have found that amusing, but it didn’t feel right.

I wanted something euphoric. I wanted something that was going to uplift people rather than be completely sad. It also fitted Darren’s desire to live like Jim Morrison. I went through the songs and realised that Touch Me was probably the one. It’s brilliant, and he loved it anyway, so I went with that first.

I remember being really happy that I had found the first song. Then I had to figure out The Lemonheads.

The Lemonheads: Into Your Arms

The Outdoor Type was a song we both loved because it’s really funny, but I wanted to pick a song that was only him. The Lemonheads were one of the bands that had been there from the start. I wanted to pick something uplifting and something I knew he loved.

I went through their albums and his favourite songs on Spotify, trying to work out which one was right. I chose Into Your Arms. It was another one of his favourite songs, so that became the second song.

Two songs down. I was really happy having worked out two- they were the easy ones. The obvious ones. Now I had to think and thinking is so, so hard.

You’re sitting there multitasking jobs. You’re trying to work out the songs. You’re figuring out who to ask to do speeches. You’re fixing up what you’ve received from the celebrant. At the same time, you’re quickly playing songs and trying to decide what works and what doesn’t.

It sounds stupid, but you’re almost trying to create a theme. You want songs that mean something, have beautiful lyrics, are melodic and uplifting, and that you know he would have liked.

Elbow: One Day Like This

I don’t know where it came from, it must have been on one of his Spotify lists, but I picked Elbow’s One Day Like This. I knew that fitted as soon as I saw it. The song meant so much to Darren. Infact, it meant so much to him that he planned to paint one of the lines from that song, Throw those curtains wide, on our hallway wall, but never got around to doing it.

Daniel and I are going to.

Daniel Singing for Darren

After Elbow, Daniel sang The Beatles’ Let It Be and My Way.

When we didn’t know whether Darren was alive or dead, and we were in the small room just crying and holding hands, Let It Be came into my head. I started to sing it, and Daniel started to sing it. We just concentrated on it and kept singing and singing it. It was all we could do, hold hands and sing it. I guess the song made such an impact on us at that point that it had to be included.

For Daniel, he really wanted to sing My Way. He had sung the song before, but this time it took on a different meaning. It was his tribute to Darren, to Darren’s spirit and to the way he lived his life his way, despite what was thrown at him. Daniel was just fantastic- it was like a concert when he finished, the claps and the cheering.

The Frank and Walters: After All

Then I needed to choose the fourth and final song for the celebration.

I was trying to find something that Darren and Daniel had a connection with and that meant something to Daniel. For that reason, I picked The Frank and Walters’ After All. It’s on the television series The Young Offenders, so it was a new song to Daniel even though it was an old-school indie song we loved. There’s a scene where they’re all singing it on the bus.

We introduced Daniel to the song, and we all really, really loved it. In this weird sort of way, it’s a fun, happy and uplifting love song. It was to end off the celebration.

That’s how I came up with the four songs for Darren’s celebration, with Daniel singing his two songs between Elbow and The Frank and Walters. Another three were needed for the next day.

Choosing the Music for Roselawn

We were having the cremation the next day, and we had to pick another three songs to play at Roselawn Crematorium.

Daniel suggested that we play The Stone Roses’ This Is the One first because that’s what the Manchester United team come out to. Darren was a true United fan, and it felt like a nice thing to have playing when he was brought into the chapel at Roselawn. That one was easy enough to choose.

I knew the final song would be Nick Cave’s The Ship Song because we had both said it would be our funeral song. That was a given. But I still couldn’t think where to go with the middle song.

I asked Darren’s friend John if there were any songs or bands he immediately thought of when he thought about Darren. Amongst his suggestions was Blondie. You know when your brain just hasn’t thought of something and, as soon as somebody says it, you’re like: Oh my God. Yes. Of course. Blondie. How could I forget? Darren loved Blondie.

His favourite song was Atomic, and his favourite line was “your hair is beautiful”. I think he must have told me within about a week of us meeting that this was his favourite song and that he loved that line (he did at the time have long luscious hair).

It was the perfect middle song to play for someone who had such a love of music.

So the three songs at Roselawn were The Stone Roses’ This Is the One, Blondie’s Atomic and Nick Cave’s The Ship Song.

That is how I picked the songs.

What I Learned About Choosing Funeral Music

It was really, really hard because Darren was somebody who loved music so much. The thing I kept reminding myself was that this wasn’t my event. It was Darren’s. I didn’t need to think about picking funeral songs. I needed to pick songs that represented him.

It was about his life, the bands he loved and the things he loved.

I could write a list of another 50 songs we could have played, but at that point, I had to cut it down to a few key songs. They had to be songs Darren loved, songs that, if I had asked him to score them, would have been solid ten out of tens.

One piece of advice I would give anyone is to listen to the whole song before you actually decide to use it. Some songs have brilliant middle sections, but they can go on and on for too long. You find yourself waiting for the end to hurry up. Other songs have a great start, but then you listen to the rest and think, “Oh, I’m not quite sure.” A song can drag, the mood can completely change halfway through or it might simply not work when you listen to it in full.

You’re not looking for the perfect song. There is no song that could ever sum Darren up. You’re just choosing songs that are representative of him, the type of things he liked and the sort of music he loved.

Quite a few people said to me afterwards that the songs were brilliant because they really reminded them of Darren. They remembered going to see a band with him. They remembered him. That was what mattered.

Choosing Funeral Music When Your Mind Is Blank

I created the Choosing Funeral Music That Actually Means Something worksheet based on what I went through when choosing the music for Darren.

It gives you somewhere to think about the person, the bands and songs they loved, the music you shared and the other people you can ask when your own brain isn’t giving you the answers.

Download the Choosing Funeral Music That Actually Means Something worksheet

For help with the other choices and decisions involved, see Planning a Funeral When You Haven’t a Clue What You’re Doing.