“A Lifetime” by Better Than Ezra

"A Lifetime" first appeared on Closer, Better Than Ezra's 2001 album, and the band later re-recorded it for Before the Robots in 2005, where the new version became a single. On the surface it's about a group of friends mourning one of their own, but singer Kevin Griffin has traced it to a darkly romantic piece of rock lore: the death of Gram Parsons, whose friend made off with his casket from LAX and set it alight out at 29 Palms as the sun came up.

Griffin spun that into his own story, of friends who steal a girl's urn to honor what she really wanted and head for the beach at dawn to play an R.E.M. song from their youth, which he later named as "Perfect Circle". Personal and dramatic at once was exactly what he was after.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.