Funeral Songs for a Loved One

How to choose funeral music without a fight

Decide what each part of the day is for, then pick backwards. People arriving need something quiet they can talk over. The service itself needs one or two songs that hold a room. The slideshow needs something with a shape — a beginning and an ending — because it has to finish when the photographs do. The reception needs music that lets people be glad they came.

Pick what they loved before you pick what is appropriate. A hymn nobody in the family knows will be sung by four people. The record they played on Sunday mornings, however unfashionable, will get a laugh and then a silence, and that is what you are trying to make happen.

Read every lyric to the end. Several standards on these lists turn in the second verse, and a line that reads as tender in the chorus can land badly in a church. If a song is right for most of its length, it is the wrong song. When in doubt, an instrumental version removes the problem entirely.

Tell the funeral director the exact recording. “Amazing Grace” is a dozen different songs depending on who is singing it, and the version in your head is not the one that will play unless you say so. Send the file or the streaming link, and ask them to cue it while people are still seated.