Magdalena Bay on the Songs They Want to Soundtrack Their Funeral

Existential Playlist is an interview series where artists tell us about the music they want played at their own memorial service, delving into some of life’s biggest questions along the way.

The Magdalena Bay experience is akin to putting on a cheap alien costume, downing some potent psychedelics, and then staring into a mirror covered in fake blood for approximately three days straight. The Los Angeles duo dreams up aesthetic playgrounds that are heady and bizarre. Synthetic and fleshy. Frivolous and profound. Retro and future. And they pull it all off with a handmade panache rooted in prog rock’s 1970s heyday, when Peter Gabriel fronted Genesis while looking like a cross between a magician and a flower.

On Imaginal Disk, one of 2024’s most adventurous pop records, they presented a loose, freaky concept in which frontwoman Mica Tenenbaum upgrades her consciousness by inserting a CD into her forehead—literally, as seen on the album’s incredible cover, as well as at the end of the video for “Death & Romance,” in which an evil doctor with a craggy star for a head cuts her open and pops in the disk. See for yourself:

Mica and her partner Matt Lewin are unafraid to tackle the biggest topics known to humankind—like the meaning of life and death and aliens—in a way that’s both earnest and fun. Their music boldly wades into existential territory, so we thought they would be perfect for our new Existential Playlist series, in which artists tell us what songs they want played at their funeral. We’re thinking of this series not as a morbid exercise so much as a shortcut to deep conversation and weird jokes. (And to be clear, we want Mica and Matt to lead long, rich lives!)

Sitting next to each other on their couch in L.A., the duo is more than up to the challenge. Naturally, they approach the interview with a conceptual bent. “We thought of our funeral soundtracks less literally and more as a stylized experience,” says Mica, as her dog Wolfie licks her face. Matt adds, “You don’t want it to be too morbid or too lighthearted. It needs to fit this wistful state, where it would feel right.”

As they talk about their individual choices, they can’t help but giggle at the absurdity of the conversation—and, perhaps, of life itself. They also introduce more self-imposed rules along the way. “The lyrics have to be exactly on theme, or so vague that you can’t tell what it’s about, or it should be an instrumental,” Mica decides, “because the attention has to be on me.”

Genesis: “The Carpet Crawlers” (1975)

Mica Tenenbaum: I love Genesis, and I’d want Peter Gabriel’s voice to be heard at my funeral. “Carpet Crawlers” is a gorgeous song. I’d never really listened to the lyrics so closely, but they actually do seem to be about destruction and rebirth and having to “get in to get out”—which is like life and death. And you get that organ vibe. It’s dabbling in those classic funeral sounds without being over-the-top or morose. 

What would you want your funeral to look like?

Mica: My grandpa’s funeral was open-casket, and something about that waxy look disturbs me. I want to be cremated, and then used in the resin of a larger-than-life statue of a mythological version of me with sick wings that would stay in the home garden and look really epic. And then for the ceremony people would gather around the statue.

John Coltrane: “Naima” (1960)

Matt Lewin: This is such a vulnerable, expressive piece of music—somber and melancholic and beautiful. There are now these A.I. music things where you type in words, and it creates a song. Maybe one day it will get to the point where it can perfectly replicate a John Coltrane song, but I still think humans wouldn’t connect to it in the same way, knowing that it wasn’t coming from an actual person’s experience.

Have you thought about how A.I. might play into digital immortality in the future?

Mica: It would be a bad idea to upload your consciousness to the cloud, because who owns that? It’s gonna be a mess, and then you’re trapped forever.

Matt: But is it better or worse than the alternative?

Mica: It might be worse.

Matt: I try not to get freaked out by A.I., because at the end of the day, I like to think there is something special about being human that can’t be replicated. And I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where you can avoid death. It’s just part of the human experience.

Mica: I feel like I wouldn’t have been an artist if I wasn’t so scared of death all the time, thinking, I’m gonna die one day, I have to do this.

Matt: If there was an infinite timeline, that could be cool also—maybe we don’t need to be doing things. But knowing that there’s an end puts some importance on everything. Without that, there’s no stakes. What does that do to your psyche if you have zero stakes?

According to every vampire movie, it makes you pretty miserable.

Mica: And sexy. [laughs]

Electric Light Orchestra: “It’s Over” (1977)

Mica: This would be a moment where everyone can laugh, like, “Ha ha, she was so funny!” [laughs] I love playing this song when we finish something really grueling, like at the end of a tour. It’s such a release: It’s over, we can move on with our lives. 

Matt: Is that how you think of your life, as a grueling slog that you celebrate when it’s over? [laughs]

Mica: Well, no. But that’s one way of looking at it that’s more lighthearted. 

Matt: ELO is a band that influenced both of us a lot. 

Mica: I started listening to them in high school, and they quickly became one of my all-time favorite bands. They’re uniquely suited for this prompt, because all of their songs have this nostalgic, bittersweet feeling, with a mix of grandioseness and earnestness that we love. 

Matt: They’re joyous but not too joyous. My ELO funeral pick would be “El Dorado,” which is more serious. It almost feels like a grand finale song, it has that big energy to it. I grew up listening to ELO. I adopted my dad’s music taste from a very early age, and that has stuck with me ever since. I’ve expanded from it, but the foundations of my music listening were my dad’s CD collection, which was the classic rock canon and prog stuff like Rush and Yes. He introduced me to Fiona Apple and Radiohead too. 

I never had the teenage angst thing with music and I never got into the idea of going against my parents’ music taste. I was a kid in elementary school who was like, “I hate rap music, you gotta listen to the Beatles.” [laughs] I grew out of that once I got a little older, but I didn’t like any pop music until college, really. 

Mica: Your brain finally developed. You could understand pop and rap.

Did anyone ever make fun of you for liking prog and classic rock growing up?

Matt: Not really. I was just too aggressively pretentious. I was making fun of people for liking popular music, so I never felt like I was being bullied for my music taste. I was a little bit of an angry kid, but I would just listen to Radiohead and sulk about it. 

Mica: You were Hail to the Thief angry. 

Matt: Yeah. I wouldn’t listen to punk or anything. 

Mica: I was the same way, also really pretentious.

Matt: But you liked My Chemical Romance. 

Mica: When I was 11 or 12, I did like My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park and Panic! at the Disco and Paramore. Then my taste expanded to be more indie-leading for a brief period. Then we started our prog-rock band in high school, and I got deep into that hole.

Matt: I was a bad influence.

Billie Joel: “My Life” (1978)

Matt: This pick is a lighthearted goof to lift the mood a little bit. I love Billy Joel. I mean, I’m not a fanatic, but I think he’s a great songwriter. He’s silly, and I like that about him. 

Mica: And he’s also kind of aggressive?

Matt: He has a flair for the dramatic, but packages it in this angry young man character. It’s an interesting combo. It’s very uncool music, which I tend to gravitate towards. This song is like a big “fuck you,” but done in a very non-punk-rock way—because Billy Joel is as far away from punk as you could get. It’s almost campy. It just has this attitude of, This is my life and I’m gonna live it how I want to. This is my go-to karaoke song, and it’s a good summation of my attitude toward life.

Mica: Yes, that’s very Matt, so I love that for him. [laughs]

The Walker Brothers: “The Electrician” (1978)

Mica: I picked some sillier songs, because the funeral shouldn’t be too intense, but I couldn’t resist throwing this one in just to lean into the experience. It feels like death—so scary, but also beautiful.

Matt: It intentionally feels like someone literally dying, where you have this beginning section that’s the death, and then this ascension to heaven. I think it’s about an electric chair and an executioner. It feels on theme.

Mica: Listening to this song at a funeral would be such an insane experience—it’s like scoring the experience in a way that just wouldn’t be OK in real life. [laughs]

How do you think people would react if this song was actually played at a funeral?

Mica: I would laugh out of nervousness. 

Matt: I think some people would find it upsetting. Maybe some people would like it. It’s weird, because I’m thinking about my parents being there and what they would react to—but obviously, I would hope they wouldn’t be there. That would be pretty bad. [laughs] 

Mica: Me too. I see my mom being like, I don’t know about this song.

Matt: But our future kids would maybe be into it. 

Mica: Yeah, they’ll be cool. 

Matt: They’d probably be like, “Oh yeah, they loved that song.”

Below you’ll find convenient playlists with Magdalena Bay’s picks for the songs they would want played at their funeral—including a few choices that we didn’t get to in the interview—for paying subscribers only. Your support makes it possible for us to keep going, thanks!