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The Music Room
What is “Fight Song” actually about?
Refusing to be counted out. Rachel Platten wrote it after years of being told to give up on music, and released it in 2015.
Should you play this for a grieving family?
Think first. This is the most double-edged song on the whole list, and we would rather say so than let you find out.
It became an anthem in the childhood cancer community, which is why it is here. For a family still in treatment it can be genuine fuel — a song about continuing when continuing looks unreasonable.
For a family whose child died, the same song can read as a promise that was not kept. The fight was fought. It did not work. A song celebrating the fight can land as an accusation, and nobody intends that.
Does it help on a hard day?
For some people, enormously. It is built for the moment before you walk into something difficult — a scan, a meeting, a first day back at work. It is loud, it is simple, and it is on your side.
But its help is conditional in a way that most songs on this list are not, and that condition is the whole reason this page exists.
What it is
A pop single written by Rachel Platten and Dave Bassett, released in 2015 on the album Wildfire. Platten had been releasing music for roughly a decade without commercial success when she wrote it; the subject is her own persistence rather than anybody’s illness. The childhood cancer association came from listeners, not from the writer.
Who this is wrong for, and when
Anyone newly bereaved. Anyone who heard it played at a fundraiser, a ward or a memorial for a child who then died. And anyone for whom “fight” language about cancer is the thing they cannot stand — a great many bereaved parents feel that, and they are right to.
We do not use battle language about children on this site. We have made an exception for this song because it is genuinely part of this community’s shared experience, and leaving it off would have been its own kind of dishonesty.
Why it is on this list
Because it is really here, in real hospital rooms, whether or not we list it — and a page that quietly omits it is less useful than a page that includes it with the warning attached.
If this one is not right for you
Lovely Day asks nothing of you. Here Comes the Sun has no fight in it at all. Rhapsody in Blue has no words to disagree with.
Where to hear it
Streaming on every major service. Read about it on Wikipedia · Find the credits on AllMusic.
We make nothing from these links. There are no affiliate links anywhere on this page and there never will be.
Back to the room
The Music Room — one hundred songs, sorted by what the moment needs.
How to tell if a charity deserves your money
We publish the test we use on ourselves, including the parts we do not pass yet. Read it here.
If tonight is bad
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988. Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741. Never behind a form on this site.
Before you give to anyone
How to tell if a charity deserves your money
We wrote down the checklist we use. Before we send a dollar anywhere, we run the organization through CharityWatch, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator and Candid. It is one page, and it works on any charity — including this one.
Read the checklist — freeOn the site, right now. Nothing to fill in and no email needed.
Start here — free, no sign-up
Guide one · 7 pages
A Reason to Get Up
Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, and what that book can and cannot do for you after somebody dies. Who Frankl actually was, what he actually argued, and the famous quote that is not his.
Download the guide — freePDF, 7 pages. Nothing to fill in, no email, no ask attached to it.
Three more, if you want them
These are the books we read and the things we did after we lost Austin. Not advice and not therapy — an honest account of what helped us, and what the research actually says about each of it. Every statistic in them carries a source and a year.
Guide two · 9 pages
The Circling
The Power of Now, and what is actually happening when you cannot stop going over it. Includes the part no grief guide prints: meditation is not risk-free, and who should be careful.
Guide three · 11 pages
Give It Away
Why doing something for somebody else, expecting nothing back, appears to do something for you. With a verified list of places that will take you this week, and the ones that will ask you to wait a year.
Guide four · 16 pages
The First Year
The practical one. What actually has to be done, what the months afterward really look like, and fifty things that might help — each one labeled for whether there is evidence behind it.
If tonight is bad
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. Free, confidential, 24 hours a day, anywhere in the US. You do not have to be in immediate danger to use it.
Crisis Text Line. Text HOME to 741741.
Veterans Crisis Line. Dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255.
If there is an immediate danger to life, call 911.
