Songs for a Memorial Service: A Complete Guide to Choosing Music That Fits

Somewhere between the funeral home paperwork and the phone calls to relatives, someone will ask you what music you want. It is a small question that can feel enormous. You are being asked to choose a handful of songs that will stand in for a whole life, and you are being asked while you are exhausted.

It helps to know that you do not have to find one perfect song. A memorial service has several distinct moments, and each one asks something different of the music. Once you think about it moment by moment, the choices get much smaller and much easier.

Start with the person, not the genre

Before you look at any list, spend five minutes remembering what they actually listened to. Not what seems appropriate for a service — what was on in their kitchen, in their truck, at their daughter''s wedding. The song someone hummed while doing dishes says more about them than any hymn chosen from a template.

A few questions that tend to shake loose the right answers: What did they sing badly and often? What was playing in the house on a Sunday? Was there a song they always turned up? Did they have a hymn from childhood, or a band they never stopped loving? If they served, danced, farmed, taught, or fished, was there music that went with it?

You may end up with something unexpected — a country song, a Motown record, a piece of bluegrass. That is usually a good sign. Guests recognize authenticity immediately, and it gives them permission to remember the person as they really were rather than as a solemn abstraction.

As guests arrive: the prelude

The fifteen or twenty minutes before a service begins are quietly important. People are walking in unsure of themselves, looking for a seat, deciding whether to speak. Music here does the work of settling a room.

You want something instrumental or low-key — the kind of music that fills space without demanding attention. Piano, strings, or gentle acoustic guitar all work well. Familiar hymns played instrumentally are a reliable choice for a church setting, and a soft playlist of the person''s favorite artists works just as well elsewhere.

Songs families often use here: Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Israel Kamakawiwo''ole), Clair de Lune (Debussy), The Blessing, Ave Maria, Canon in D (Pachelbel), Wayfaring Stranger, Be Still My Soul, Bridge Over Troubled Water, or an instrumental arrangement of Amazing Grace.

Plan for more music than you think you need. Services rarely start exactly on time, and silence in a full room is heavier than most people expect.

The opening: setting the tone

The first song after everyone is seated tells guests what kind of gathering this is. A traditional hymn signals a service rooted in faith. A well-loved popular song signals something warmer and more personal. Neither is more correct.

Traditional openings that carry well: Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, It Is Well With My Soul, On Eagle''s Wings, Be Thou My Vision, Great Is Thy Faithfulness.

Contemporary openings families choose: Blessings (Laura Story), I Can Only Imagine (MercyMe), Homesick (MercyMe), Held (Natalie Grant), Rise Up (Andra Day), You Raise Me Up (Josh Groban).

During the tribute or reflection

Many services set aside a few minutes for quiet reflection, often after the eulogy. This is where the most personal song usually belongs — the one that is unmistakably theirs. It is also the moment guests are most likely to cry, and that is not a failure of planning. It is the point.

If you are choosing a song for a parent: Dance With My Father (Luther Vandross), In My Life (The Beatles), The Living Years (Mike + The Mechanics), Landslide (Fleetwood Mac), Wind Beneath My Wings (Bette Midler), My Old Man (Zac Brown Band).

For a spouse or partner: Unchained Melody, Make You Feel My Love (Adele or Bob Dylan), Grow Old With Me, Forever Young, The Luckiest (Ben Folds), My Girl.

For a friend or sibling: Lean on Me, I''ll Be Seeing You, See You Again, Fire and Rain (James Taylor), The Dance (Garth Brooks).

For someone who died young: Who You''d Be Today (Kenny Chesney), Fly (Celine Dion), Angel (Sarah McLachlan), If Heaven Wasn''t So Far Away (Justin Moore).

For the slideshow or photo tribute

Slideshow music has one practical constraint the other moments do not: length. Count your photos, allow five to seven seconds each, and choose songs that add up to roughly that running time. Two songs of four minutes each will comfortably carry sixty to eighty photos.

Choose songs with a steady, unhurried tempo. Anything with dramatic tempo changes fights the images rather than supporting them. And be careful with lyrics that are too on-the-nose about death — over three or four minutes of family photographs, they can tip a room from moved to overwhelmed.

Reliable slideshow choices: Photograph (Ed Sheeran), Humble and Kind (Tim McGraw), What a Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong), My Wish (Rascal Flatts), Simple Man (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Time to Say Goodbye, Stand By Me.

The closing and recessional

The last song is what people carry out the door with them, and it is worth choosing deliberately. Many families find the closing is the right place for something with a little lift — not cheerful exactly, but forward-facing.

Options that send a room out gently: Go Rest High on That Mountain (Vince Gill), I''ll Fly Away, When the Saints Go Marching In, Somewhere Only We Know, Here Comes the Sun, Sweet Caroline if that was who they were, or Danny Boy if it was not.

Practical things worth checking

A few small details prevent most of the problems families run into:

• Ask the venue what they can actually play. Some churches have restrictions on non-liturgical music; some funeral homes need files on a USB drive rather than a streaming account.
• Download the audio in advance. Venue wifi fails at exactly the wrong moment.
• Listen to each song all the way through before the service. A verse you have forgotten can land very differently in a room full of grieving people.
• Check radio edits versus album versions, and confirm the specific recording you want if a song has many covers.
• Tell whoever is running sound where the fade-outs go, especially for the slideshow.
• If someone is singing live, give them a second option in case they cannot get through it. Many people cannot, and there is no shame in it.

Fewer songs, chosen well

Three or four songs is plenty for most services. Families who try to include every meaningful song end up with a service that feels like a playlist rather than a farewell. If a song matters but does not fit the service, play it at the reception, or at the graveside, or in the car on the way home.

When no existing song quite says it

Sometimes a family goes through every list and every memory and still cannot find it. The songs are close, but they are about someone else''s father, someone else''s loss. Their name is not in any of them.

That is the gap Their Life Song was made for. Families share the stories, the details, the small particular things — the nickname, the garden, the way she answered the phone — and we write and record an original song about that person. Some families play it at the service. Others keep it for later, for the first birthday without them, or for a grandchild who will not remember them otherwise. There is no wrong time, and there is no obligation to use it at the service at all.

Whatever you choose, the music does not have to be perfect. It only has to be theirs.

Related reading

• Custom Memorial Songs: The Complete Guide
• How to Choose Music for a Funeral or Memorial Service
• Tribute Songs for a Funeral: Songs Families Choose, and How to Make One of Your Own