DYING is the ultimate music marketing tool, sending sales soaring at the negligible cost of a single life. These artists made out like posthumous bandits:
Blackstar by David Bowie, 2016
Impeccable timing; released on the Friday, deceased on the Monday. And the album’s focus on death is synergistic marketing at its best, making it seems as if Bowie was writing from profound personal experience with magnificent artistic integrity when really he just wanted to shift units. You don’t get a career like his without that dedication to capitalism.
Grace by Jeff Buckley, 1994
An underappreciated cult classic until Buckley accidentally drowned in the Mississippi, after which sales have never stopped rising. Without that tragedy the public would still think Hallelujah was an Alexandra Burke song. Buckley had it all: A four-octave vocal range, dazzling good looks, and an innate genius for marketing.
MTV Unplugged in New York by Nirvana, 1994
Live acoustic sets are generally curios sought out only by hardcore fans. Not so for this collection, which went straight to the top of the charts thanks to forward-thinking frontman Kurt Cobain’s well-timed suicide. Not the first rocker to kill himself, but then grunge was rather derivative.
Songbird by Eva Cassidy, 1998
Radio 2 listeners love a good voice and a sad story. Eva Cassidy had both. Unknown until she kicked her career into overdrive by kicking the bucket, Terry Wogan played a couple of her covers on his breakfast show and, three years after release, the middle-aged bought into her tragic tale and made it a chart topper. They never listen to it now.
Lioness: Hidden Treasures by Amy Winehouse, 2011
A posthumous compilation of unreleased songs, covers and demos; in other words, studio sweepings which Winehouse wouldn’t have countenanced releasing had she lived. But the public was hungry for more from the Camden Nightingale, as she was never known, and lapped up alternate versions of songs they already owned and a Nas track.
Double Fantasy by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1980
Lennon’s post-Beatles period alternated between albums his fans liked, without Yoko Ono, and albums they tolerated, with Yoko Ono. This one, about their reuniting and domestic bliss, was the latter. Unpopular and low in the charts, he showed the world how it’s done by being killed by a fan and scoring a worldwide hit. Six months later Ono’s Season of Glass, featuring John’s bloodied glasses on the cover, charted at a lowly 49.
