Credit: Far Out / TIDAL
November 5th, 2026 · 1:30am GMT
A life is made up of thousands upon thousands of songs: the first song you remember your parents singing to you, the single from the first album you ever bought yourself, the song you danced to with your crush or your best friend on a night when anything felt possible, the song you return to when you need everything else to fade out.
In the musical tapestry of your life, there’s one final song that will define you, one you’ll never get to hear: the song playing at your funeral. You could go with a classic, like Eva Cassidy’s ‘Over the Rainbow’, simultaneously gesturing backwards to the magic of a life fulfilled and forwards to an unknown future of lush gardens and vibrant colours, or ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra, a drum roll of a song to bow out in style.
Perhaps even ‘We’ll Meet Again’ by Vera Lynn, the selfless choice, the equivalent of pulling the entire room of snotty-nosed mourners into one last huge embrace, rewriting the day as a parenthesis, not a full stop. Chances are the song mightn’t be heard anyway over the thick sludge of blubbering and weeping.
For Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett, it’s none of these tunes. On the morbid day of her demise, she’d like something classic and timeless to paint her life as one both ordinary and, in its far reach, extraordinary. I’m talking about The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’, taken from their 11th studio album, 1969’s Abbey Road.
Barnett told NME, “It’s so peaceful. I don’t really know what the lyrics are about, but it’s just so gentle. I want it played at my funeral, to make people feel sad.”
She’s hit the nail on the head here, as ‘Here Comes the Sun’ is a song defined by lush overtures and a happy-go-lucky skip, which does little to hide the reflective and poignant melancholy beating at the heart of the track. It was written and sung by George Harrison, who had come out into the limelight (the sun, perhaps?) for one of his most famous compositions.
It’s the perfect choice for a funeral song, not least because it contains several time signature changes, reflecting Harrison’s continued adoration of Indian classical music as one of his key influences. Fittingly for a farewell, the song refuses to keep strict time.
Further reading: From The Vault
Harrison also wrote the song as a way to turn away from the increasingly pressing Beatles’ Apple Corps organisation meetings. As he wrote in his autobiography, I, Me, Mine, “Apple was getting like school, where we had to go and be businessmen.”
Instead, “one day I decided I was going to sag off Apple, and I went over to Eric Clapton’s house. The relief of not having to see all those dopey accountants was wonderful, and I walked around the garden with one of Eric’s acoustic guitars and wrote ‘Here Comes The Sun’.”
Is this not the perfect vision of the afterlife? Life’s tedious responsibilities shrugged off, an endless landscape of green, and Clapton lingering by the door with some tea and scones? Sign me up.
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