Jazzed-up funeral ceremonies might just hit the wrong note

Perhaps it is the ultimate sign of faith in the afterlife – or alternatively a last desperate grasping at straws – but more mourners are now veering away from traditional requiem hymns like The Lord is My Shepherd at funerals towards more modern pop ditties like You Raise Me Up.

At least the sentiment there is a good one – which is more than can be said for the single most popular song at funerals overseen by one major firm of undertakers in the UK last year . . . Frank Sinatra singing My Way.

And according to the Funeralcare Co-Op, that was closely followed by Time to Say Goodbye performed by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman – ahead of Eva Cassidy’s version of Over the Rainbow.

Then there’s Ed Sheeran’s Supermarket Flowers, which is not as trite as it might seem from the title because it’s about the grief losing your mother.

“So I'll sing Hallelujah; You were an angel in the shape of my mum; When I fell down you'd be there holding me up; Spread your wings as you go; And when God takes you back we'll say Hallelujah; You're home.”

This secular phenomenon is down – in part at least – to the decline in church attendance; Funeralcare found that, for the first time, there were no hymns among the ten most frequently requested pieces at 100,000 funerals organised by its UK staff last year.

So, it’s not so much that the mourners don’t like the traditional songs . . . it’s that they don’t know them.

And, equally, they’re blissfully unaware of what might have been the conventional approach to funerals – so they make up their own.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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