Who is Nick Cave? Singer wants Kanye West’s music played at his funeral

Nick Cave has recently disclosed that he would like a Kanye West song to be played at his funeral. The revelation came from Cave's Red Hand Files website, where the singer responds to letters from his fans.

Nick Cave is a 67-year-old singer-songwriter from Australia, who has been the frontman for major bands of the post-punk movement in the 90s, such as Bad Seeds and Birthday Party.

Cave answered questions from two fans, Helen and Damian, in the #311 issue earlier this month, as reported by Billboard on January 29. Damian wanted to know which song he would like to be played at his funeral. To that, Nick Cave's reply was Kanye West's I Am God.

"Oh, and Damian, please, ‘I Am A God’ by Kanye West," he said.

Besides, when asked to pick songs to accompany them on a desert island, Nick Cave's eight songs included cuts from Johny Cash and Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, T. Rex, Karen Dalton, Tim Rose, John Lee Hooker, The Saints, and Kanye West.

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Nick Cave began singing in choirs at the age of eight

Nick Cave was born in an Australian rural town in Victoria, with an English teacher and a librarian as his parents. Within a couple of years of Cave's birth, his family moved to another town, Wangaratta.

Nick was raised as an Anglican and joined the cathedral choir when he was just eight years old. Four years later, Cave was sent to a boarding school in Melbourne, where he befriended the people who would later form his first band.

When Nick was 17, he joined an art school to study painting but ended up failing in his second year. A year later, Cave lost his father in a car crash.

In the mid-1970s, Nick Cave and his school friend, Mick Harvey, formed a band in Melbourne with guitarist Rowland Howard, drummer Phil Calvert, and bassist Tracy Pew. Their band was initially named Boys Next Door, which changed to Birthday Party in 1980, when they relocated to London.

In London, the band quickly grew in popularity, earning them a record contract with 4AD. In 1982, they released their group's signature album, Junkyard.

In 1983, Birthday Party disintegrated, with Cave and Harvey moving on to a new band, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The new band carried the dark intensity of Birthday Party, adding a passionate exploration of love and pain to it.

Their largest commercial success came in 1996, when Where the Wild Roses Grow was released. It was a collaborative work of the band and Australian singer, Kylie Minogue.

In 2006, Cave started a Bad Seeds side project called Grinderman, releasing two albums in 2007 and 2010. Harvey's split from Cave's band came in 2009, but the band continued to release new music. The latest album by the band was titled Wild God, and dropped in 2024.

Besides music, Cave has also published several books, including a Southern Gothic novel and epic poem inspired by his 2014 tour, among others.

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Cave described Kanye West as "our greatest artist" in an older Red Hand Files response

According to Billboard, this is not the first time Nick Cave has made his admiration of Kanye West apparent in his words. Five years ago, while responding to another question in January 2020, the Australian musician described Ye as "our greatest artist."

"Making art is a form of madness – we slip deep within our own singular vision and become lost to it. 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 said.

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Despite Nick's appreciation of Kanye West, the artists are yet to collaborate on a project.