Otis Redding recorded “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” in late November and early December 1967, whistling over the ending because he had not finished writing the last verse. On December 10 his plane crashed into a lake in Wisconsin. The song was released in January 1968 and became the first posthumous number one single in American chart history. Many of the best-loved records in pop were finished, or released, after the people who made them had died.
1. Otis Redding: “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” (1968)
Redding was 26. The whistle at the end, meant as a placeholder, stayed on the record. The song won two Grammys and is now one of the most played songs of the 20th century.
2. Janis Joplin: Pearl (1971)
Joplin died in October 1970 while recording the album. One song, “Buried Alive in the Blues”, was released without the vocal she had planned to add the day she was found. Pearl went to number one in the United States and stayed there for nine weeks, and “Me and Bobby McGee” became her only number one single.
3. Jimi Hendrix: The Cry of Love (1971)
Hendrix had been working on a double album when he died in September 1970. His drummer, Mitch Mitchell, and engineer Eddie Kramer assembled The Cry of Love from the tapes, and it reached the top three in both Britain and America. Dozens more posthumous Hendrix releases followed over the next fifty years.
4. The Notorious B.I.G.: Life After Death (1997)
Christopher Wallace was shot dead in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997. Life After Death, the double album he had already finished and named, was released sixteen days later. It went to number one and has been certified diamond, with more than ten million units sold.
5. Johnny Cash: American V: A Hundred Highways (2006)
Cash kept recording with the producer Rick Rubin after his wife, June Carter Cash, died in May 2003, almost until his own death that September. American V came out in 2006 and went to number one, the first Johnny Cash album to top the Billboard 200 since the 1960s.
6. Amy Winehouse: Lioness: Hidden Treasures (2011)
Released in December 2011, five months after her death, Lioness collected demos, covers and unfinished songs. It went to number one in Britain. Her producers, Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson, put it together.
7. Mac Miller: Circles (2020)
Mac Miller died of an accidental overdose in September 2018 while working on Circles, a companion to his album Swimming. The producer Jon Brion finished it from Miller’s recordings and notes, with the family’s approval, and it was released in January 2020.
8. Juice WRLD: Legends Never Die (2020)
Juice WRLD died in December 2019, aged 21, after a seizure at Chicago’s Midway airport. His label and family released Legends Never Die in July 2020, and it debuted at number one in the United States.
David Bowie went the other way. He released Blackstar on his 69th birthday, January 8, 2016, and died two days later. Its songs, including “Lazarus” with its opening line “Look up here, I’m in heaven”, turned out to be a goodbye he had planned.