Dead Funny

Via No Rock 'N' Roll Fun comes news of a survey of the music people want to hear at their funeral -- strictly that should be music people want other people to hear at their funeral, surely.

French people, Italians and Spaniards go for fairly sensible choices of Ave Maria and Mozart's Requiem.

Germans want AC/DC's Highway to Hell, Metallica's Nothing Else Matters and Queen's The Show Must Go On which suggests that their survey was taken at the local youth club on Friday night.

The English dully and predictably want to inflict Robbie Williams on their nearest and dearest one more time. Second comes Frank Sinatra's My Way which does make some sense, though the fact that it's second in the survey suggests that your way is pretty much the same as everyone elses and far for being one last defiant show of your individuality is in fact one confirmation of your, er, conformity.

And in third comes Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life which, again, seems to be the last hurrah of someone who probably is now surprised that they weren't the only one who thought of this, but is still insisting, nay, demanding, that it's hilarious.

My choice, since you asked, is, and has been for quite some time, John Cale's version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. My favourite version of one of my favourite songs and Cale's reading of it makes it sound like a hymn. Or perhaps just because of the way it rhymes "out drew you" with "Hallelujah".