Nick Cave has revealed the song he would like to be played at his funeral.
The Australian responded to a pair of questions on his blog The Red Hand Files on Wednesday (January 29), one in reaction to his appearance on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, and the other asking him about his funeral choice.
Answering the latter question directly, he wrote: “Oh, and Damian, please, ‘I Am A God’ by Kanye West.”
It comes just days after Cave selected the ‘Yeezus’ track as one of his eight favourite records on Desert Island Discs. Speaking about the choice, he said: “This became, weirdly enough, a kind of family song. My kids love it, Susie loves it, I love it. It’s an extremely playful, extremely dark, complex song where on the one hand, Kanye is presenting himself as a god, and then towards the end of the song, he’s screaming in terror.”
“It’s an unbelievably deep song, in my view,” he continued. “This is a song that I value on a personal level, and actually I just think is a complete, amazing work of art.”
Cave has discussed his love of Kanye’s music multiple times in the past, describing him in 2020 as “the greatest artist” on Earth. “Making art is a form of madness – we slip deep within our own singular vision and become lost to it,” he said. “There is no musician on Earth that is as committed to their own derangement as Kanye, and in this respect, at this point in time, he is our greatest artist.”
He later stated that he found West’s allegedly anti-Semitic comments “deeply disappointing” and “disgraceful”.
“For me, for him to pull out these antisemitic tropes, I think it’s, personally, disgraceful,” he said in 2022. “Does this person need to descend from such great heights down to such tedious shit we’ve heard so much so often? It’s deeply disappointing to me, and for some time it might be difficult for me personally to listen to a Kanye record, but at the same time I value the output more, on some level.”
“Ultimately, I value the output more, and I know that in time I will be able to get over that and just feel free to be able to listen to Kanye’s music again. That he won’t forever be trapped in the worst aspect of his character, and the music that he makes is a journey away from the worst aspect of his character, like all our music is.”
He said in a later interview that his reaction to the comments had not prevented him from listening to Kanye’s music. “It’s a personal choice as to whether you can go on and listen to that person’s music,” he said. “I personally can. I love Kanye’s music. I feel that he’s done the best music of anybody in some time, the most interesting, challenging, bold music.”
Cave has spoken elsewhere about making peace with the artists that have “disappointed him”, explaining that he is willing to look beyond their personal decisions if they art they make is “authentic”.
“When I think of the artists that I truly admire, those that I have stuck with over the years, at some point in their lengthy careers they have all disappointed me,” he began.
“Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Nina Simone, Kanye, Van Morrison, Morrissey, Brian Eno, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith – these are artists that, for me, form a kind of confederacy of excellence, but at one time or another they have each alienated, confounded or displeased me. They have often not travelled in the direction I would have hoped or wished for, instead following their own confounding paths (damn them!) to their own truths.
“In the course of this I have sometimes been discomforted by things they have done, disagreed with things they have said, or not liked a particular record they have made. Yet there is something about them that keeps me captivated, and forever alert to what they might do next.”
Cave also told NME in 2023: “It’s no accident that the really great stuff is often made by the most problematic people. I don’t quite understand it, but there’s certainly no metric that says that virtuousness makes good art. If you start looking around for the good people who make good art, the conversation shuts down very quickly. All the great stuff seems to be made by people who are in some way, out of order in some way or another.
“I just value art and see that the need for it is too urgent to be fucking around and taking this stuff down. That’s where my problem with the cancel culture business begins and ends. It’s not some great fight I’m having with these people. I just worry about the world and we need as much good stuff as possible.”
Elsewhere, Cave recently announced a European solo tour that will run from June to August.