This year's tour's song always on the radio with annoying lyrics comes from "The Band Perry" with "If I Die Young", which I have to say isn't a patch on Keats'
When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be. Whilst Keats cared more about the work that would be lost by his early demise (tragically prophetic of course), The Band Perry are a bit more mawkish and self-indulgent, fancifully planning their own funeral arrangements.
Now I can identify with that. I have spent most of my life predicting my own death, wallowing in the grief that that would create and imagining funerals where female mourners lez up in my memory. It's a teenage bit of self-regard. But I acknowledge that my own attempts to create my own epitaph have been pathetic. And the Band Perry are similarly idiotic. They think they're being noble and romantic, but it's not really any young person's place to start planning their funeral, especially if they are not already terminally ill. We all fear death and we all like to predict it happening in the mistaken belief that that might ward off death, or if it fails to do that make us look like we somehow knew we were doomed. But the truth is that in the 21st Century the chances are you've got a long way to go and (I am the last person who should be saying this) should be concentrating on living rather than indulging yourself by imagining your own death (I am nothing if not a hypocrite.
But it's mainly the comical complexity of the wishes that amuses me and I can't help imagining the Band Perry's family being forced to follow these complicated wishes when they will be mourning and unhappy and shocked by the death of their kids at such a young age.
"If I die young," sings the self-important lady without thinking to give us an age range of what would constitute "young". These days dying at 65 is considered young for many. Do these arrangements still have to be made in that case? Or is it only if she dies in the next couple of years. You need to be more specific.
She continues, "Bury me in satin," romanticising the need for her corpse to have expensive, soft material around it. Fair enough perhaps. If it ended there I wouldn't be that annoyed. It's a waste of money, but reasonable in its simplicity.
But she goes on "Lay me down on a bed of roses". Already you can imagine her relatives thinking "What the fuck?" I mean she's dead, we're not trying to screw her (one would hope). She's not Princess Diana or a Viking Queen, she's just a singer. But here she is wrapped up in a sheet and now lying on a specially constructed bed made of flowers. It seems a bit over the top already. Wouldn't a coffin do? We could chuck some petals in after you. Are you sure you want to be lying in state, especially given that in all likelihood if you have died "young" (presuming that's under 30) then you were probably in quite a bad accident. At least if you're in a sheet then we won't be able to see your scars and burns. OK, look, dying young would be horrible (not that you have died young yet or are even ill, just asking us to mourn for you even though you are alive and healthy and just using conjecture at this point - should be save our grief for people who actually have died young or who might do? Rather than planning the expensive burial of someone she seems to be in pretty good spirits and health?)
Now her demands get a bit more ridiculous, "Sink me in the river," she requests. So now we've got to get the whole bed of roses, lined with satin up on some kind of crane and weighted down with rocks (or I am guessing giving her expensive tastes - gold bars - surprised she didn't ask for that), and let's not even get into the health and safety implications even if her relatives can afford to get the comfortable flower hearse to the water and keep it from floating away. Do we have no concern for anyone living down river who might be bathing in and drinking from this water containing decomposing singers and flowers?
And just to make things more difficult, with perfect comic timing she now adds, "At Dawn". So her relatives will now have to get up at maybe 2am, so they have time to get themselves and the bed of roses to the river and to set up and test the apparatus that will ensure she is sunk to the bottom of the river in time to carry out the complicated procedure as the sun rises. All the time of course the person they're doing this for is dead and unable to appreciate any of their efforts. I would imagine their sadness would turn to frustration and anger at the unreasonable demands. If I was there I'd be saying, "Can't we just chuck her in a skip?"
And if that wasn't enough they will also have to set up some kind of amplification equipment down by the river as her last wish is that they "Send her away with the words of a love song". Again weird that she was so specific about the flowers and cloth and time of her burial, but doesn't specify which song she wants to be played or read or sung. Maybe arrogantly she's assuming that her own song, this song, will be the song that will be played. Which to me seems to be just rubbing in the mourners faces how far she's made them come. They're cold, tired, probably wet from sinking her in the river and have spent all their money and now have to listen to her listing all the things she wanted, at a time when presumably she had no actual warning of whatever disease or accident would kill her.
I would certainly be pissing in the river once the service was over if I'd been through all that. Why does she want to inconvenience everyone so much and laud and celebrate herself quite as much. Surely it's up to the rest of the world to decide that she deserves such an elaborate send off, not herself. And yet now she's put it all in song her family's hands are tied.
I wonder if it's all just a way to ensure that they do everything in their power to keep her alive until she's old. Which explains why she did not specify what "young" meant. "You're 84 now gran."
"That's still young, some people live to 116 years old. I still want the whole satiny, rosy, river burial if I go now."
"All right, we'll pay for the cancer treatment. Fucking Hell. You old bitch."
"I am young."
I hate the Band Perry, but I can't kill them or I am just playing into their hands.
