Perfect Mixtape for Dying

Editor's note: Death is by nature an intensely personal experience. The compilation described here is designed with a only single person in mind. If you feel this playlist does not reflect your personal mortuary desires, feel free to come up with your own. And also, f**k you. I have great taste in music.

1.) Wrapping Paper - Cream

Finding out that I'm dying will be distressing. I want to have something to calm me down; something almost yellow in its mellow. Wrapping Paper is that something. It's absolute nonsense in a happy melody sung by people who were tripping BALLS. And Jack Bruce's voice is a military grade tranquilizer. I'll be probably end up more unconscious than relaxed.

2.) When I Am King/Be My Yoko Ono - Great Big Sea/Barenaked Ladies

Glee will no doubt still exist in the distant future; and, out of sheer desperation, I assume they will have done a compilation of these songs with the original artists, who were guest starring. So I can use them both. Ha!

But anyway. The Great Big Sea and Barenaked Ladies were the bands of my childhood. There aren't many similarities between the two, beyond having two lead singers and being extremely Canadian. But they formed the only "genre" of music I fully realized existed until the seventh grade. This is what music sounds like to me; these are the songs that I can sing all the words to and most of the instrumental parts. Be My Yoko Ono is earnest and clever and quirky and sweet; When I Am King is basically the collective mind of fourth graders everywhere expressed in bagpipes. They are the meanings of the word "music." It would be a crime not to include them.

3.) Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show

All mixtapes need filler. Might as well have quality filler.

4.) Blood Bank - Bon Iver

This one pulls double-duty: reflecting on sad stuff and girl/boy stuff, depending on whichever I'm pursuing by the time of my demise. For the uninitiated, Bon Iver is a bearded man who lives in a cabin in northern Wisconsin, and who has the worst case of Seasonal Affectedness Disorder (S.A.D.) that anyone has ever experienced. His music is sad without being slow; he Autotunes his voice into layers and layers and layers, creating a wall of sound more profound than anything Phil Spector ever crapped out. And yet it still makes weirdly excellent mood music. I'm not kidding. Really fantastic. Ask around.

5.) Send Me On My Way - Dear Abbeys

This is the greatest accomplishment of the human race. Twenty-four men singing every single vocal and instrumental part - including drums! - to that one song from Matilda. There is no reason such a concoction should work. But it does. The Boston College a cappella managed to make that stupid an idea into my favorite song. It's weird that it would be. But no song makes me happier; no song brings so much unrestrained joy. No song would be more fitting to die to; especially if you want to die happy.