We’ve learned about a lot of music tracks that represent death in different ways. Most of them are peaceful and are sort of instrumental light music or pop music. However, this time I’m gonna introduce something different.
All three of them are rhythm game-style music, which means that they are fast-paced and they have high BPM. If you haven’t played a rhythm game before, you may have never heard about this kind of music yet.
The first track is named R.I.P., composed by Eicateve from a Japanese music competition, the BMS of fighters in 2018. This song is dedicated to the remembrance of a friend of the composer, who passed away at the age of 21 because of a traffic accident.
It is an instrumental music piece, so there are no lyrics. This track can be divided into 2 parts, and their styles are really different.
This song’s first half creates a sense of violence and represents the dark side of death.
It can be described as the artist imagining the moment of his friend’s death again and again.
The second half makes a huge contrast. The bright and hopeful feeling illustrates its shift into relief from the pain.
In that way, the track demonstrates death as a boundary line.
It is a cut that separates life before and after death. And this actually marks the start of a new version of life.
The second track is called Last by onoken from a mobile rhythm game called Arcaea. This track has three versions: the instrumental version, which will be played right now, and two versions with different lyrics. I selected an excerpt from each of the two versions.
Let’s see the first excerpt: “If I can meet you again, I’ll make any fate with my own hands, no matter what I lose in the process of pursuing it.”
This track offers a completely different perspective on death than the previous one. Instead of accepting death, this track shows a feeling to refuse, to reject, or fight against death because it forces people to lose connection with things still in the world, such as their friends and their family.
What the track ultimately illustrates is a rebellion against this grandiose nature of death.
The third track is called Cryout by JU_E. It is a dedication to the death of the composer’s friend as well.
This song differs from the previous two as well. The entire track is highly orderly, with a natural, simple structure and a calm melody.
That composure and peacefulness reflect the inevitability of death and the idea of meeting it with quiet acceptance rather than panic.
Together with its soft and bright melody, the song also suggests that death is not always dramatic. It can arrive silently as well.
Synthesizing these three songs, we can see that death functions as a boundary line, and it can appear either as a dramatic ending or as a quiet exit.
This points to an interesting idea: death is, in many ways, defined by how different people, in this case other people that are still alive, understand it. Different perspectives produce different interpretations. In a broader sense, death both ends a life and gives rise to a new version of identity. Thanks for listening.