10 Great Rock Songs Inspired By Death

Anything that eventually gets put down in a song usually has some personal meaning to the songwriter. Though we've had tons of nonsense songs throughout the rock world, people who really put time into their craft do like to sprinkle bits and pieces of their personal lives into the mix as well. Most of them can be happy, but sometimes life can change things up a little bit.

As loved ones come and go throughout rock history, these are songs that were inspired by someone passing on, with the artists pouring their heart and soul into every note they sing. Not all of these are actually supposed to be downer songs though. While it comes with the territory that these songs would be sad, some of them are a lot 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 bit unhappy though, and you definitely get more than a few instances where the band is either angry, sad, or just unsure of how to really process their feelings. Death is a difficult subject though, and these artists managed to put all of those experiences into song that most of us can barely put into words. They may have been put through the emotional ringer, but they managed to come out on the other side stronger.

Before you even listen to an emo song, you know it's already going to be on the darker side of the spectrum. I mean, this is a genre that prides itself on wearing a lot of its emotions on its sleeve from time to time, so some morbid subject matter was always going to creep in. For a band that always embraced the tag though, Hear You Me seems to be more on the optimistic side for Jimmy Eat World.

Around the time the band were making Bleed American, Jim Adkins ended up writing this song in tribute to a couple of fans who had tragically passed away in a car accident a few years prior. Compared to the down and out feelings that you get on every other song, this is the kind of track that can bring you to tears without even knowing the context, as Jim talks about angels leading these two to the other side.

To JEW, these were more than just your average fans. Back in the day before they got off the ground, they became friendly with them and even ended up crashing at their house whenever they didn't have a place at the end of the night. Fans are always your bread and butter, but a song like this goes that one extra mile. These people were like family to them, and they deserve to have the proper sendoff that any other family member would have gotten.