10 great rock songs inspired by death

Whatever ends up being written in a song usually has personal meaning to the songwriter. While we’ve had tons of nonsensical songs across the rock world, people who really dedicate time to their craft also like to sprinkle bits of their personal lives into the mix. Most of them can be happy, but sometimes life can change things a bit.

As Loved Ones come and go through rock history, these are songs that were inspired by someone who passed away, with the artists putting their heart and soul into every note they sing. However, not all of these songs are meant to be depressing songs. While it comes with the territory that these songs would be sad, some of them are much more focused on celebrating the person’s life, preferring to see how they lived rather than how they met their end.

You can’t write songs like this and not be a little unhappy, and you definitely get more than a few instances where the band is either angry, or sad, or doesn’t really know how to process their feelings. Death is a tough subject though, and these artists managed to put all those experiences into song that most of us can barely put into words. They may have been strained, but they managed to come out stronger on the other side.

Before you even listen to an emo song, you know it will already be on the darker side of the spectrum. I mean, it’s a genre that prides itself on wearing a lot of its emotions on its sleeve from time to time, so a morbid topic was always going to creep in. For a group that has always embraced the tag, Hear You Me seems to be more upbeat for Jimmy Eat World.

Around the time the band was making Bleed American, Jim Adkins ended up writing this song as a tribute to a few fans who had tragically died in a car crash a few years prior. Compared to the depressed feelings you get on all the other songs, it’s the kind of track that can make you cry without even knowing the context, as Jim talks about angels leading these two to the other side.

For JEW, that was more than your average fans. The day before they took off, they became friends with them and even ended up crashing at their house whenever they had no room at the end of the night. Fans are always your bread and butter, but a song like this goes even further. These people were like family to them, and they deserve to have the proper send-off that any other family member would have received.