Songs in the Key of Death

It turns out that America's morbid funeral industry relies largely on one man for its ambient mourning music:

But mourners don’t simply want “Scarborough Fair”—they want “Scarborough Fair” through a David Young filter, what the advertisement for Young’s music describes as “semi-spiritual.” The spirituality is “semi” in that it lends itself commercially to distribution agreements with corporations who manufacture embalming chemicals, but is still moving enough to preserve the emotional sanctity of our rituals for death. In a church funeral, hymns and music at prescribed moments bring on a wave of grief we desire and expect, and one that swells and then—crucially—subsides as the music ends....David Young’s music, when it shows up at a funeral home, doesn’t ask much of a listener in terms of attention, reverence, or devotion. The spirituality comes easy, and so do the emotions—if they come at all.