Sourced and sung.
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Ocean Breathes Salty
Recorded at Sweet Tea in Oxford, Mississippi, and it turns a hard look at mortality into something close to serene.
Dani California
One character, tracked across three albums to her death, and a Frusciante outro built on Purple Haze.
Murder Was the Case
A Faustian bargain told in the first person, later expanded into an eighteen-minute film Dre co-directed with Fab Five Freddy.
Hymne a l'amour
Piaf wrote these words for boxer Marcel Cerdan months before his plane went down, and recorded them the following May.
I Will Follow You Into the Dark
One microphone, mono, caught during a studio break when the headphones failed, and Gibbard's breath before the first chord.
Here Comes Your Man
A teenage demo the band mocked as their Tom Petty song, until Gil Norton talked it onto Doolittle.
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Willis, a Choctaw freedman, wrote it, and the Fisk quartet's 1909 Victor disc now sits in the National Recording Registry.
Leader of the Pack
Shadow Morton's teenage melodrama, a motorcycle revving through the mix, and a BBC that refused to play it.
Hells Bells
A one-ton bronze bell cast to order in Loughborough, recorded inside the foundry, and Johnson's opening words for AC/DC.
The End
Krieger's raga-style tuning, Morrison at his most unnerving, and nearly twelve minutes Coppola later gave to Apocalypse Now.
Can the Circle Be Unbroken (By and By)
A 1907 hymn rewritten into a mother's funeral, with A.P. Carter tightening the grief and Maybelle's guitar holding it.
Knocking on Heaven's Door
Two short verses written for a dying sheriff in Pat Garrett, with Roger McGuinn on guitar and Jim Keltner drumming.
He Stopped Loving Her Today
Jones thought nobody would play something so morbid; Sherrill spent eighteen months coaxing the vocal onto tape.
Back in Black
Johnson was told the Bon Scott tribute could not be morbid, so he wrote a celebration over Angus Young's riff.
Eleanor Rigby
No Beatle plays an instrument on it; George Martin's string octet does everything, sawing away at two solitary lives.
A Day in the Life
Two unfinished songs bolted together, an orchestra climbing to nothing, and the last piano chord in pop.