Nathan Morris, Mortician and Musician: Why a Licensed Embalmer Writes Songs About Grief

I'm Nathan Morris, a licensed Kentucky funeral director and embalmer, and I write pop songs. People usually laugh when they hear that combination. Then they get quiet, because they figure out it isn't a gimmick. It's the same job done two ways.

I have held my Kentucky funeral director and embalmer license since 2014, and I have spent more than 15 years in the funeral profession. I found out I could sing when I was 8 years old. For a long time I thought those were two separate lives. One paid the bills. The other was the dream I kept almost reaching.

They were never separate. Here's what the prep room taught me about writing songs.

An embalmer learns to look closely

Embalming is careful, quiet work. You are preparing someone so their family can see them one more time and say what they need to say. You notice small things. The way a mother's hands were always folded. The wedding ring that has to go back on before the family walks in. The shirt a son picked out because "Dad wore it to every one of our games."

That habit of noticing is the whole job of a songwriter. A good lyric is not "I miss you." A good lyric is the empty chair at the table, the coffee mug nobody wants to move, the voicemail you still have not deleted. I learned to see those details standing next to families, long before I learned to write them down.

A mortician hears the truth about people

When I sat across the arrangement table from a family, I didn't hear résumés. Nobody told me their father's job title. They told me he whistled when he fixed things. They told me she made the same casserole for every funeral in the county and nobody ever got the recipe.

That is what people actually remember. Not the big stuff. The specific, ordinary, human stuff. As a mortician I heard it every week, and it changed what I think a song is for. A song is for helping somebody feel the thing they have been carrying, so they can finally set it down for a minute.

That is the idea behind my newsletter, Feel Anything, and behind almost everything I make.

Music is the first thing families ask about

Here's something most people outside funeral service don't know. After the big decisions are made, one of the first emotional conversations is about music. What song played at the wedding. What he sang in the truck. What she hummed while she cooked.

Families would freeze on this question all the time. So I built a free tool called Funeral Music Planner that helps families choose the music for a service without that pressure. It's the place where my two worlds meet most directly: the funeral director who knows what families need, and the musician who knows what a song can do in a room.

Signed, dropped, and still singing

My music career did not go in a straight line. I was signed and dropped twice. I kept writing anyway, mostly in the cracks of long funeral home days.

In 2022 and 2023, things finally broke open when people started finding my videos about life as a funeral director who also sings. Not long after, my single "Yet" climbed to No. 15 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. LEX18 covered my story as a Kentucky mortician and musician, and Entrepreneur wrote about it too. You can hear the songs on the music page.

My most recent original, "Names I'll Never Lose," is about the people who kept me here when things were hard. Four of them are my sons. One of my favorite lines from it is simple: "I didn't stay because it was easy. I stayed because it was true."

Why I covered "Last Christmas"

My cover of "Last Christmas" is out now. I'll tell you why a funeral director picked that song.

George Michael released it in 1984. It became one of the most loved Christmas songs in the world, but it did not hit No. 1 on the UK chart until 2021. He died on Christmas Day in 2016. He never saw it reach the top.

That hit me hard, because it is the most funeral director thing I know. So much of what matters about a life shows up after the person is gone. The legacy, the stories, the song that finally gets its moment. You do the work anyway, even if you never see the payoff.

The cover art is me next to a 1980s Cadillac hearse covered in Christmas lights, a nod to the decade the original came out. It's a little funny and a little sad. So is this whole season for a lot of families.

What funeral service gave my music

Here is what more than 15 years as a funeral director and embalmer gave me as a writer:

• Patience with silence. Grieving people don't need you to fill every pause. Neither do songs.
• Respect for the ordinary. The small details are the big ones.
• Honesty without cruelty. You can tell the truth about loss and still be kind.
• A reason to make things that last. Every service reminds you that time is short and the work you leave behind matters.

Where to find me

Every Tuesday at 7pm ET, I host The Mortals Live on YouTube at @nathanmorrismusic, where we talk about life, death, and the stuff in between. For funeral professionals, I built Selection Room, a daily content idea tool that helps funeral homes show up online without burning out.

And if a song of mine ever helps you feel something you've been holding in, that's the whole point. That's what the prep room taught me, and it's what I'm still trying to do with every song.