The Times
‘When I hear Bob Dyan, I think of Nanna’ - a soundtrack of lost loved ones by our writers.
Music to Die For is a new project that asks people to talk about the songs that remind them of those they’ve lost. Here, Caitlin Moran, Anthony Loyd and more share their stories
Leaving London Bridge station last week I heard the rat-a-tat opening of A Message to You, Rudy coming out of a busker’s speaker. I thought, as I always do when I hear the Specials’ song, of Rob. Rob was my brilliant friend who played the drums, liked dressing up — in an indelible combination of these interests he once came to my house party dressed as the drumming gorilla from the Cadbury’s advert — had a beautiful family and died from a brain tumour appallingly young six years ago.
I messaged our group of friends and instantly we were sharing our favourite Rob songs — from Nickelback’s Rockstar to Ruby by the Kaiser Chiefs — the latter performed by Rob at a “rockstar karaoke” night, where he simply couldn’t get the number of “Rubys” in the chorus right. Not that it went any way to dampening his enthusiasm or volume. That was very Rob. Rob loved music — and we loved Rob.
This intertwining of music and memory is behind a new project, Music to Die For — a website that invites people to share the song that reminds them of someone they have lost. It was set up by Hazel Harrison, a clinical psychologist, and Phillipa Anders, an arts consultant, last year after a workshop at the Britten Pears Arts Centre in Aldeburgh. “We can be very awkward talking about grief and loss in the UK. People find it diUcult to know what to say when someone has died,” Harrison says. “We wondered, what if we presented this invitation to people to tell us about a piece of music and how it connects them to someone they’ve lost? What if we started trying to provide a space where people could do that? Perhaps it could open the door to bigger conversations.”
They launched the website in March. So far, it features an eclectic range of music from Bach to Bob Marley, the Proclaimers, Fleetwood Mac and the 1st Battalion Irish Guards — and an even more surprising mix of stories, from daughters remembering their dad’s favourite karaoke number to widowers finding new love, and those who have lost their love of music in the fog of grief and are slowly finding their way back to it (via Led Zeppelin). “When we started I jokingly said, are we curating the world’s most depressing playlist, a website full of really, really sad songs?” Harrison says. “But I’ve been really surprised by the diversity of the music that has come in.”
Harrison and Anders listen to every piece of music, and write back to each submission. They post one story a week on the website and Instagram, and next week will hold an event at the Aldeburgh Festival where they will share some of the stories, accompanied by music from the pianist George Fu. Eventually they would love to make it into a podcast and book.
“It is such a range of human lives, you haven’t got to be famous. This isn’t Desert Island Discs,” Harrison says. “Music offers us this incredible ability to time travel, to reconnect with people. It gives us a route back to those moments of love and joy. We’ve found that people want a chance to talk about those they have lost. They want a chance to say their name.”
- Alice Jones, The Times - 05/06/25
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