Arriving at a time when a slew of high-profile musician deaths have left many people struggling to understand why there is such an outpouring of grief from members of the public for people they have never met, Mortality and Music by Christopher Partridge makes it clear that the intersections between music and death are many and varied, and that popular music plays important roles in helping people make sense of death. The book is accessible and wide-ranging, and demonstrates an impressive depth of scholarship. The relationship between death and popular music is considered from a number of different angles through, as is made clear in the opening section, a theological lens.

The first chapter, on ‘Mortality and immortality’, explores the overarching context of how death is thought about in our society before the focus is narrowed more to popular music in later chapters. Partridge discusses the way death has become less visible in western society, both literally with the medicalisation and professionalization of the processes of death and burial, and metaphorically, as a focus on the self makes the idea of the extinguishing of that self more difficult to understand and face. Drawing on theorists such as Freud and Bauman, Partridge shows how culture can be used to resist death and find hope and comfort, but also to reach for some form of immortality. Regardless, though, of what strategies we use to ignore or try to overcome it, we are always ‘haunted by the awareness of death’ (p. 35), and this is reflected in the culture we create and our responses to it.

Chapter 2, ‘Death, transgression and the sacred’ looks at how the way death has become a taboo subject makes it an obvious resource that those who wish to defy social norms can draw upon to create new identities. As transgression is a central component of many types of popular music, it makes sense that we would find representations of death in this music that defy norms and taboos on the subject. Partridge argues that the approach to death in popular music is unavoidably influenced by Christianity, and also closely intertwined with transgressive representations of sex. Essentially, young people participating in youth subcultures (some much more than others) have created unique cultural forms by focusing on death, which sets these subcultures apart from mainstream culture and gives them a rebellious aspect. Death can be made cool, or even sexy. Partridge makes the point that this could really only happen in a society where death is so far removed from everyday life, and among young people for whom the prospect of death is still so remote as to seem impossible. The following chapter on ‘The undead and the uncanny’ takes Goth subculture and the Gothic as more widely understood as more in-depth case studies, and provides an analysis of how artists working with a Gothic sensibility make death affective. This includes a consideration of the impact of the music itself, which (as has been often noted) can sometimes be neglected in analyses of subcultures. Partridge includes many examples, with extended discussion of Joy Division's album Closer and the influence of the photography of Joel-Peter Witkin. He concludes that the Gothic gives death a pleasurable aspect, which ultimately, like religion, ‘function[s] as a denial of death’ (p. 94).

The following chapter, ‘Morbidity, violence and suicide’, looks at ways in which popular music and its culture allow people to engage with aspects of death that are otherwise hidden or denied to us. For example, in a culture where the physical realities of death are rarely discussed or seen, the imagery (both in artwork and lyrics) of metal genres where gore is celebrated gives audiences chances to consider what death means for the body. The chapter also looks at how angry or melancholic music, or music that deals directly with death or suicide, can serve similar functions for fans emotionally. Partridge manages to walk the fine line between acknowledging the influence that music can have on its audience and granting it too much power over people's actions in this discussion. He concludes that ‘popular music makes an enormously important contribution to our ability to deal with the core experiences of mortality’ (p. 135), providing a space where topics that are otherwise avoided but that young people in particular might struggle with are opened up for consideration.

Partridge ends the volume by moving in the final chapter to a consideration of musicians who have died, and the relationship that their fans have with them. This is mainly examined through looking at how these musicians are sacrilized, and the difference between this and normal fandom. For some fans, their dead idols genuinely do come to inhabit a place that is religious in nature, where they represent something transcendent and beyond the everyday and, in the most extreme cases, can even be communicated with. In particular, he takes issue with the term ‘secular pilgrims’, arguing that there is a subset of fans who visit locations closely associated with dead musicians for whom this is not an activity that can rightly be described as secular. Instead, he describes how this can be an activity akin to a religious pilgrimage, in that it takes the participant away from the everyday and to a liminal, more meaningful place. This only occurs, though, when a fan has built their sense of meaning in life around this figure.

This ambitious book claims important space in this developing area of research. Partridge considers key philosophical issues in insightful ways, and draws on both an impressive array of scholarly ideas and examples from different musical genres and eras. The book also points the way for future empirical research with audiences to find out the extent to which music does perform the functions that Partridge suggests that it does in mediating their relationship with death. Ultimately, Partridge provides as many provocations and starting points as answers or complete theories, but does so in a way that is engaging and somehow comforting. Mortality and Music is a highly engaging and thought-provoking read.