10 Great Rock Songs Inspired By Death
3. Candle In the Wind - Elton John
The world of show business has never exactly been the safest environment for people. When you have that many cameras on you following you around day after day, there comes a point when even the sharpest minds tend to crack under the pressure. That leads to a lot of casualties, and Bernie Taupin became fascinated with those fallen stars on Candle In the Wind.
Even though the origin of the phrase was used by Clive Davis to describe the death of Janis Joplin, Bernie shifted the focus to Marilyn Monroe for Elton John to sing, talking about how much grace she had even in the most high stakes situations. While there's a lot of sympathy for Monroe's character in this song, there's also a few jabs at the kind of media circus that surrounds most stars, with news outlets being more enthralled with the state of her body at the time of her death than the kind of legacy she left behind.
In fact, the beauty of this song was almost too good to be attributed to just Norma Jean, as Elton eventually performed the song with rewritten lyrics to accompany the funeral for Princess Diana. That says more about the song than anything else. There may be one person in the center, but this is a tribute to every candle in the wind, snuffed out before the world was really ready for it to leave.