Blue Öyster Cult’s 1976 classic ‘(Don’t Fear) The Reaper’ was inspired partly by songwriter Buck Dharma’s diagnosis of an irregular heartbeat, which prompted him to confront his own mortality. The article presents the song as enduring because it turns fear of death into a reflection on love, continuity and the possibility of transcendence.

Dharma drew on literature about death, love and the occult, with Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ a particular influence. Although its lyrics have sometimes been interpreted as endorsing suicide, Dharma has said the song concerns the cycle of life and death and the survival of the spirit; it became the band’s defining hit and an influential hard-rock record.