The Age Old Question: A Podcast for Music Fans · Rich Price and Clint Bierman

What Songs Do You Want Played On Your Deathbed?

May 30, 2023·39 min·2 clips

My funeral gift to my bandmate: Wildflowers, memorized, no safety net.

Hosts Rich Price and Clint Bierman, musicians who have debated music since college, explore what songs they want played during their final moments. Clint immediately chooses Tom Petty's "Wildflowers," demanding his bandmate Peter Day perform it from memory as a parting gift. Rich seeks background music that envelops without demanding focus, selecting Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" and a deep cut by David Gray. The episode was recorded backstage before a Beatles and Rolling Stones tribute concert, allowing them to poll fellow musicians. Clint explains "Wildflowers" is deceptively simple but lyrically challenging, a song he first learned for a college funeral. Rich cites a 2018 New Yorker article calling "Astral Weeks" a "mystical document," and critic Greil Marcus compared its impact to Bob Beamon's record-shattering long jump at the 1968 Olympics. Guest Peter Day selects The Beatles' "Because" for its perfect, harmonically dense vocals featuring nine layered voices. Josh Panda reveals his will mandates Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" on cassette tape during his tree-planting ceremony. A surprising insight is Clint's audible switch to Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good" for its non-abrasive, instrumental quality that allows pure presence. Rich shares an early David Gray concert in 1994 that made him a lifelong fan, long before the "White Ladder" breakthrough. The hosts note a thematic link in their recent episodes about songs for Sundays, warm baths, and now deathbeds, joking about a shared midlife crisis. They also reflect on how society reevaluates songs, referencing their past episode on tracks that haven't aged well, like Ray Charles' "A Woman's a Woman" or The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar." The tone is conversational and reflective, blending personal anecdotes with music history and criticism. Listeners enjoy a backstage, fly-on-the-wall feeling as guests are casually interviewed. This episode will deeply satisfy music fans who love song analysis, artist backstories, and existential questions about life's soundtrack. Those seeking purely upbeat or non-contemplative content might find the mortality theme too heavy.

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