The Guardian report on research conducted by Marie Curie concerning the songs people find most helpful when it comes to end-of-life care. Here are the top 10 songs rquested:

• My Way – Frank Sinatra
• I Will Always Love You – Whitney Houston
• (Simply) The Best – Tina Turner
• Over The Rainbow – Judy Garland
• Girls Just Want to Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper
• Angels – Robbie Williams
• What A Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong
• Beautiful – Christina Aguilera
• Hey Jude – The Beatles
• These Are The Days Of Our Lives – Queen

An interesting list, I reckon, with a few interesting common themes.

Some of the choices are quite unsurprising. My Way has been a funeral favourite for quite some time and retains the top spot. It is also amongst the most depressing when you actually think about it. A manifesto for the self-important, fist-shaking, man-centric mini-gods of this age. All that matters is that ‘I did it my way’. Which is a deeply unfortunate song to sing as we ready to meet our maker having refused to say the words of ‘one who kneels’. The most common sentiment at the end of most people’s lives is that they did it their way and actively not God’s way. It is a view that is both staggering in its arrogance – as if ‘my way’ is necessarily the best way – and deeply sad that such a final line, true as it probably is, will come a cropper as they stand before the Lord Jesus – who called himself The Way – and notes their final plea about the way they preferred.

Other me-centric, self-aggrandising choices speak to the spirit of the age. Simply the Best, Beautiful and I Will Always Love You (though the last of those three arguably less so than the others) speak to our own self-importance and self-image. They are simply claims of greatness in our own eyes that speak to the self-image that most people seem to hold. We are, indeed, the best. We are beautiful (no matter what anyone else says). I will always love you because… of course you would.

These Are The Days Of Our Lives, What A Wonderful World and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun speak into the rather depressing, hedonistic and somewhat nihilistic view of many that all there is to do is extract as much joy out of this life as possible because, in the end, that is all there is. These Are The Days Of Our Lives at least has the benefit of recognising, albeit implicitly, that these things don’t last and it is rather empty if that is all we have. But the idea of simply having fun and enjoying the world for all it’s worth is ultimately the only position for those who believe this life is all there is. The sad problem for such people is that often the world hasn’t been a source of great joy and, even those who have found it to be such, find it is all fleeting and ultimately meaningless.

The final theme is the somewhat vague, but hopeful, songs like Angels and Over The Rainbow. They are songs that don’t really say anything at all. They speak to a hope of something, something better, but lack any great clarity concerning what it is. If Angels exist, the implication is there must be something and it offers some vague hope that everything will be alright and there is something to come without any real help ascertaining what it might be or how to even get there. Somewhere Over The Rainbow sound hopeful, but somewhere speaks to a lack of clarity or certainty about where it is or what it is really like. Those who cannot quite settle on this life being all there is, but who nevertheless do not believe in the God who created it nor hope to be with him for eternity in the place where he dwells, must instead comfort themselves with vagaries of something better, somewhere better, that is unknown, uncertain whether we’ll get there and based on mere wishful thinking.

The slight outlier is Hey Jude. It is a generally sad song about a sad situation written for Julian Lennon when his parents were divorcing. Julian Lennon has specifically said this about the song:

It’s a beautiful sentiment, no question about that, and I’m very thankful – but I’ve also been driven up the wall by it…

…Every time you quote that [song], it reminds me of my mother being separated from my father, the love that was lost, the fact that I rarely saw my father again ever.

I saw him maybe a couple of times before he died. A lot of people don’t quite get how intense, how emotional, and how personal that is.

The song is not so much about enduring love as the painful memory of love lost and the pain of being left behind, picking up the pieces of a failed marriage and the sad reckoning (as Julian Lennon has previously said) that your dad sang a lot about love but failed to show very much of it to him or his mother. Which makes it a somewhat strange option for an end-of-life song, but when you think about it, probably falls under the me-centric, My Way category of self-love, self-image and you doing you. It just takes a bit of thinking about the song to get there. I suspect most aren’t thinking so deeply about the context of this one though.

What we are left with is a pretty sad set of songs. A set of songs that sum up the only views we might have if this is all there is. Life is to be lived for one thing and one thing only – me and my personal pleasure. As long as I have lived life according to my own rules, as long as I have extracted every ounce of joy I can, I may even hope for something better without any real belief there is anything actually better, then all is basically well. Ten songs for the age; ten songs that sum up how most people think and feel about the end of their life.

Perhaps I am biased, but it all seems so empty and vacuous. It all seems so baseless and depressing. Perhaps there are some better songs. Realistic and yet hopeful songs. Songs like Christ Our Hope In Life & Death. Songs like In Christ Alone. Songs like Man Of Sorrows, Lamb of God. Songs that speak to a better hope. Songs that speak to more certain realities beyond here and now. Songs that recognise the realism of the world we live in, and offer a realistic view of who we really are and what we’re really like – less beautiful no matter what they say and more ugly sinner because it is what God says – and yet, nevertheless, loved with everlasting love by a God who pours his grace out upon us regardless. Songs that speak to eternal realities, without glossing over present realities, offering hope because of Jesus’ historical reality and the spiritual reality of God’s great grace received by faith in Christ for needy sinners who have become beloved children. Those are the kind of songs worth singing at the end of our lives. Not empty, not vacuous, not meaningless, not me-centric but hopeful, realistic, God-centred songs speaking to better things in Christ.