Mortality and Music Popular Music and the Awareness of Death [Paperback]

The evidence of death and dying has been removed from the everyday lives of most Westerners. Yet we constantly live with the awareness of our vulnerability as mortals. Drawing on a range of genres, bands and artists,Mortality and Musicexamines the ways in which popular music has responded to our awareness of the inevitability of death and the anxiety it can evoke. Exploring bereavement, depression, suicide, violence, gore, and fans' responses to the deaths of musicians, it argues for the social and cultural significance of popular music's treatment of mortality and the apparent absurdity of existence.Christopher Partridgeis Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, UK. Recent publications includeThe Occult World (2014, ed.,),The Lyre of Orpheus: Popular Music, the Sacred and the Profane(2013),Dub in Babylon(2010), andHoly Terror: Understanding Religion and Violence in Popular Culture(2010, ed.,). He is co-editor ofBloomsbury Studies in Religion and Popular Music.

Introduction
1. Mortality and Immortality
2. Death and the Sacred
3. The Undead and the Uncanny
4. Morbidity, Violence, and Suicide
5. Transfiguration, Devotion and Immortality