Music for the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls

Posted for your listening pleasure, here is a 40-song series of suites for the Christian feasts of All Saints and All Souls—those holidays that follow from Halloween, or All Hallows Eve.

I’ve devoted much time and energy over the past 30 years to learning, understanding, and collecting popular music. Yes, I majored in music theory and music history in college, which takes in centuries of great music, including the whole swath of what is known generically as “classical.” But my primary love is pop music, for better or worse. Here is some of what I believe to be the better—some hits, some flops, and lots of deep album cuts.

from pixabay.com

The common theme is death. When Christians celebrate Halloween, we do so to mock the forces of death for their impotence in the face of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to deal with grief—indeed, it’s crucial for all humans to do so, just a part of the existential landscape that is common to us all. Years ago, I came to see November as a month for wrestling for with death—not just on Halloween and on the two Christians feasts that follow, but throughout the month until the season of Advent heralds the beginning of the wait for Christmas.

These 40 songs flow through the classic “stages of grief” enumerated by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in the 1960s. Although we now know much more about the malleability of these stages and that they are often experienced in a different order, those who are grieving can and do recognize when they are in one or another of them.

Here’s the track list, broken out by suite. I welcome your comments and questions.

Suite 1: The Souls of the Saints

Yael Naïm – New Soul

Simon & Garfunkel – Blessed

Sarah McLachlan – Prayer of St. Francis

They Might Be Giants – Older

Sufjan Stevens – Fourth of July

Rick Springfield – My Father’s Chair

Suite 2: Denial

Gillian Welch & Alison Krauss – I’ll Fly Away

They Might Be Giants – Turn Around

Tori Amos – Happy Phantom

Blood, Sweat & Tears – And When I Die

Fastball – The Way

Coldplay – 42

They Might Be Giants – Road Movie to Berlin

Suite 3: Anger

Death Cab for Cutie – I Will Follow You into the Dark

The Police – Spirits in the Material World

XTC – No Language in Our Lungs

Vampire Weekend – Diane Young

Howard Jones – Hunger for the Flesh

Oasis – Don’t Look Back in Anger

Queen – The Show Must Go On

Suite 4: Bargaining

Tennessee Ernie Ford – Sixteen Tons

Ralph Stanley – O Death

Blue Oyster Cult – (Don’t Fear) the Reaper

They Might Be Giants – Dead

XTC – Rook

The Postal Service – We Will Become Silhouettes

Suite 5: Depression

Bob Dylan – Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door

Young the Giant – Cough Syrup

Men at Work – Overkill

Toad the Wet Sprocket – Begin

Metallica – Fade to Black

Queen – Who Wants to Live Forever

Suite 6: Acceptance

Of Monsters and Men – Little Talks

The Head & the Heart – These Days Are Numbered

Indigo Girls – History of Us

The Flaming Lips – Do You Realize??

Semisonic – Closing Time

Delta Rae – Dance in the Graveyards

Sufjan Stevens – We Won’t Need Legs to Stand

Edgar Leslie Bainton/Jeffrey Skidmore – And I Saw a New Heaven