Song

Dont Fear The Reaper

Blue Oyster Cult

Album:

Agents of Fortune

Song Meaning of Don't Fear The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult, and what it is about

Blue Öyster Cult, a hard-rock band born out of the intellectual, Sixties hippie scene at Long Island’s Stony Brook University, had been kicking around a few years when they manifested this spooky death trip.

Being the subject of Saturday Night Live’s infamous “More cowbell!” sketch made the song a punch line in the 2000s, but to hear it on the radio late at night is to be freaked out anew by singer-guitarist “Buck Dharma” Roeser crooning about Romeo, Juliet, and the “40,000 men and women every day” headed to the great beyond.

"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is a song by American rock band Blue Öyster Cult from the band's 1976 album Agents of Fortune. The song, written and sung by lead guitarist Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser, deals with eternal love and the inevitability of death. Dharma wrote the song while picturing an early death for himself.

Released as an single the song is Blue Öyster Cult's highest chart success #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1976.

The song is about the inevitability of death and the foolishness of fearing it, and was written when Dharma was thinking about what would happen if he died at a young age. Lyrics such as "Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity" have led many listeners to interpret the song to be about a murder–suicide pact, but Dharma says the song is about eternal love, rather than suicide.

He used Romeo and Juliet to describe a couple who wanted to be together in the afterlife. He guessed that "40,000 men and women" died each day (from all causes), and the figure was used several times in the lyrics; but this number was about 100,000 too low.

"I felt that I had just achieved some kind of resonance with the psychology of people when I came up with that, I was actually kind of appalled when I first realized that some people were seeing it as an advertisement for suicide or something that was not my intention at all. It is, like, not to be afraid of [death] (as opposed to actively bring it about). It's basically a love song where the love transcends the actual physical existence of the partners." Said Buck Dharma, lead singer.

Lyrics of Don't Fear The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult

All our times have come

Here but now they're gone

Seasons don't fear the reaper

Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain... we can be like they are

Come on baby... don't fear the reaper

Baby take my hand... don't fear the reaper

We'll be able to fly... don't fear the reaper

Baby I'm your man...

La la la la la

Valentine is done

Here but now they're gone