Amazing Freaking Grace

"Let's just... sing! Yeah! Here's a fun song to sing when people die!"

— Carly Shay stalling for time at a wake in the iCarly episode "iPie"

Written in 1772 by John Newton, "Amazing Grace"—what with its positive messages of freedom and safety—is one of the most popular hymns in the Christian faith. It's so popular, in fact, that some people forget its religious context altogether. It's a standard at funerals, and for this reason is highly likely to trigger cases of Tender Tears or Manly Tears, especially for police, firefighter, and military funerals. In short, it's well, pretty amazing.

And since it's not under copyright, and everyone knows it, it's one of very few songs you're ever going to hear at a funeral on TV or film. (It's this or "Danny Boy", people.) On a bagpipe ("One of the three songs that sound good on the bagpipes," it's been called, the others being "Danny Boy" and "Scotland the Brave".) No ifs, ands, or buts. Or in any other situation that requires a hymn, for that matter. Even though almost every other hymn is in the public domain, too.

Fun fact: Amazing Grace, like many hymns, was not married with the tune (called "New Britain") it's sung to now until sometime in the mid-19th century. Any example of it being sung to the same melody before then is an (admittedly understandable) case of artistic license. On rarer occasions, the final verse ("When we've been there ten thousand years…") may be heard in a setting before it was actually added in the late 1800s. (The original last verse was "The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, / The sun forbear to shine; / But God, who call'd me here below, / Will be forever mine.", and is less commonly used today.) To hear what it would have sounded like in its old tune, check out this link of Sacred Harp singers (who also sing a lot of other old-timey hymns in a much more lively and bombastic fashion than what you might picture as typical dull church music).

The "Amazing Grace" melody, like many hymns, is composed completely on the pentatonic scale. Among other things, this means that even a completely unmusical Mook can plink it out on a piano by playing it on only the black keys. (Hint: start with C-sharp, the leftmost key on one of the groups of two.)

Another fun fact: It uses the Common Meter, which is, naturally, very common. As such the same lyrics can be sung to the tune of The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island, "Camp Town Races," "House of the Rising Sun," and "I Just Can't Wait to be King," along with many other songs.

And another fun fact: The song is occasionally shown as being sung by American slaves prior to the Civil War, it being far more recognizable than any true "slave songs." Appropriately, it was written by a slave trader who gave up the business and later became a minister, which is the reason for the line "That saved a wretch like me."

Compare Small Reference Pools. For another song commonly played at military or police funerals, see Taps. Not to be confused with The Amazing Race. Nor with the film Amazing Grace. Nor with computer science legend Rear Admiral "Amazing Grace" Hopper.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• The anime adaptation of Steam Detectives uses this in some intervals during the story, usually to great dramatic effects.
• The fourth opening theme of Eureka Seven 'sakura' includes an operatic version of Amazing Grace. The truncated openings of the English broadcast omitted that, but you can still hear Amazing Grace in the background of the main Japanese vocals, and it's next to impossible to miss.
• England from Hetalia: Axis Powers has this as his cellphone ringtone.
• Kagura sings this at Bob's nightclub (in English in both the dubbed and subbed versions, though while Monica Rial sang the song in the dubbed version, a different singer is used in the subbed version) in episode 5 of Speed Grapher.
• It's a Dream Melody in Sound of the Sky. Any fan of thew show hearing it played on a lone trumpet or bugle may suffer from Tender Tears
  Kanata:"This sound strikes a chord. Whether in Rome or Helvetia, it is the same."
• In the Detective Conan Film 12: Full Score of Fear movie, Amazing Grace played a crucial role as it's being sung on concert.
• In Uta No Prince Sama Tokiya sings it in the hospital with a chorus of Littlest Cancer Patients.
• It's a favourite (theme)song of Kawai Maria, and later the whole class rehearses it for the choir performance.
• Used as the ending credits in the first film of the Mardock Scramble trilogy, and in the background of the third film.
• Jin Rohs "Grace Omega" ending theme is based on amazing grace.
• In Luminous Witches, Virginia "Ginny" Robertson's rendition of "Amazing Grace" is featured as a recurring leitmotif.

Fanfiction

• Parodied in The Return-Remixed. Mickie James sings a scathing parody of the song at DEAR's mock-funeral for Beth Phoenix, who had surrendered the Divas Championship a week earlier due to a severe concussion at the hands of DEAR and not knowing if she could ever wrestle again.

Films — Live-Action

• Parodied in The Simpsons Movie. They play a funeral version of Green Day's "American Idiot".
• This is actually a plot point in Maverick: someone works out that two characters are related when they both sing "Amazing Grace" and get the same words wrong.
• Famously used during Spock's funeral at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Presumably it was Scotty's request that it be a part of the service to allow him to say his goodbyes to an old friend.
• It is used in the William Wilberforce biopic movie Amazing Grace. Since the original tune of the song is unknown, this is perhaps more an example of artistic license than a mistake.
• Averted: "Abide With Me" (itself a popular funeral hymn) is also used in the soundtrack for 28 Days Later during the scene where they find Jim's dead parents, mostly because using "Amazing Grace" would make whoever chose the soundtrack sound like a colossal bastard. It's sung by a female soloist. No bagpipes in sight.
• The 1978 remake (the one before the re-remake and the even more recent re-re-remake) of Invasion of the Body Snatchers uses Amazing Grace (the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards version, which shot them to stardom) when Matthew runs towards a ship, seeing it as a means of escape. The music here represents hope that he will get away. However, as he approaches, he sees that the ship is being loaded with pods-and the music stops as someone changes records.
• The Nixon-parody film Hail (AKA Hail To The Chief) has Judy Collins' version of the song playing as the (fictional) President's army of paramilitary thugs storm a colony of hippie protesters. The song cuts off when a Jesus-lookalike is shot dead.
• In the 2012 film Chronicle, this is played at the funeral of Steve, one of the central characters in the story to this point.
• American Gangster: A choir sings "Amazing Grace" while drug lord Frank Lucas and his brothers are arrested in a "round-em-up" montage.
• Memphis Belle: Bomber crews sing "Amazing Grace" as they drive out to their planes on jeeps. It segues into a military march arrangement, and a montage of the ground crews preparing the bombers for takeoff. And to make sure they were making full use of the trope, they sing "Danny Boy" as their plane is going down in a Dark Reprise of a big band jazz version of "Danny Boy" at the hangar dance, sung by none other than Harry Connick Jr.
• Played during Tommy Callahan Jr's funeral in Tommy Boy, on bagpipes. Tommy III (Chris Farley) walks off into the distance after the funeral while the song plays.
• The revised cut of Highlander II: The Quickening inserts a bagpipe version of Amazing Grace during Ramirez's final moments. Considering he IS played by Sean Connery...
• The "New Britain" tune is used in Braveheart during the funeral scenes. Considering the timeframe, probably a case of artistic license.
• An alien rendition is performed during Zed's funeral in Men in Black 3.
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Played on the bagpipes during Superman's funeral.
• In The Blood of Jesus it's sung at Martha's baptism. One of several hymns sung during the film.
• In Stroker Ace, Lugs likes to sing this to himself. It's also his go-to song if he wants to show off his singing voice, but Pembrook is the only one who appreciates it.
• The song is used quite effectively in the climax of L.A. Story. Bonus points for making the bagpipes be a minor plot point.
• In Dog Days (2018), Dr. Mike's assistant Ernie sings "Amazing Grace" to Jimmy, as he sits in the waiting room crying over his dog's death.
• In Poor Pretty Eddie, Liz's voice singing the song plays in the background during the wedding shootout.
• In Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, one of Al's first song parodies is "Amazing Grapes" - he performs it at the dinner table as a child, to his unimpressed Fantasy-Forbidding Father.

Literature

• At the end of Piers Anthony's Being a Green Mother, this is sung at a wedding by the groom, to demonstrate his genuine love for his bride despite the fact that he's Satan.
• Alan Moore's novel Jerusalem contains an entire chapter about the song, how John Newton came to write it, and a former slave trying to come to terms with the fact that the most liberating song he knows was written by a slave trader.

Live-Action TV

• Parodied in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "The Touch of Satan"; after a torch-bearing mob sings the song for a second time, Tom Servo sings, "This song is in/the public domain/that's why we used it twice!" Then it gets sung a third time. Crow, meanwhile, is appalled:
  Crow: You can't use "Amazing Grace" in a devil movie!
• Even though Firefly is set in the year 2518 and almost everything about Earth That Was is lost, guess what they're singing at the funeral at the end of "Heart of Gold"?
• Used at a mass in one Eureka episode.
• Used in the horror series Night Visions, in one of the episodes made into the Made-for-TV Movie Shadow Realm, wherein an entire town with a pathological fear of music for fear of a man-eating monster known as The Beast, which can only be awakened by music, is convinced by the newcomer outsider that this monster is a superstition, and the entire town sings it. The Beast, apparently a giant ghost head, comes and presumably eats them all in the funniest bit of tragic irony you ever saw. The female lead's last words were "Why did I ever listen to you?!"
• Played with in Judging Amy, where Amy and her partner go to the funeral of a colleague that no one really liked. When they get there, they find that the funeral is attended by only three relatives, who are all in deep grief. To cover the inevitable silence, Amy's partner starts singing "Amazing Grace", which deeply touches the relatives.
• Reese sings an out-of-tune version of it in one Malcolm in the Middle episode. As quoted below, he doesn't know the right lyrics.
  Amazing race, how sweet the taste
  That saves a wrench for me,
  I once was in the lost and found
  Was blind but found my keys
• In the Bones episode "The Double Death of the Dearly Departed", guess what they sing at the wake? And then there's an interesting aversion when they're loading the casket into the hearse and they begin singing his favorite song. The song? Lime in the Coconut.
• Sung at a memorial service for three murdered teenagers on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
• A truly unfortunate example from Sliders: washed-up R&B singer Rembrandt Brown is practicing for his "big comeback" (scat-singing the anthem at a Giants game), when his car intercepts a runaway wormhole and crashes on a parallel Earth. The initially self-absorbed character learns a lesson in patriotism when he's caught up in the war between the occupying USSR and the American underground — and at the end of the show, over the bodies of slain rebels, delivers a sober, heartfelt rendition of... Amazing Grace. (Word of God says that he would have performed the anthem in a less crucial scene that had to be cut for time.)
• iCarly: Sung at the pie maker's funeral in the episode "iPie". Carly sings it to distract from the fact that her friends are trying to steal his pie recipe.
• On The Mentalist, it's to be assumed Amazing Grace was played at a funeral, judging by the way they sing it afterward. Bagpipes are mentioned.
• Some ads for Lost season six revolve around the Willie Nelson version.
• Cold Lazarus by Dennis Potter. A boy runs away from church where the choir is singing Amazing Grace — the sweet music continues poignantly over the reveal that all these are memories a semi-revived frozen head, far in the future is being forced to relive: ironically reaching "was blind but now I see."
• The Amazing Race:
  • In the Season 15 finale. By an Elvis impersonator. In a wedding chapel. In Las Vegas. Seriously.
  • Season 17 includes a pair of college students/a capella singers, and their introduction clips showed them singing "Amazing Race".
• Performed during a proposal on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. The groom requested it because the bride's name was Grace.
• Diane calms a crowd of angry mourners of one of Coach's friends in a second-season episode of Cheers, "Coach Buries a Grudge" with it.
• It gets sung by Maria at Alex's funeral in Roswell, although the writers did at least use some of the less well-known verses.
• The end is played in an early episode of Dexter when LaGuerta goes to the funeral of the suspected Ice Truck Killer, who turned out to be another victim. Only the end is heard, though, and the words "Amazing Grace" are never actually spoken.
• A Cherokee version is used in the Wonderfalls episode "Totem Mole". The situation fits the song's lyrics very well, since a tough, cold-hearted lawyer has just found her way to spirituality.
• Used in General Hospital, when Brenda Barrett returned from the dead, as she encountered former lover Sonny in a church courtyard during a rainstorm.
• In the Criminal Minds episode "A Real Rain," "Amazing Grace" is played on the bagpipes at a police funeral. Officer Nora Bennett, watching this on television, says, "I can never get that sound out of my head. It wakes me up at night. If there was any justice, cop killers would have to hear it for an eternity."
• The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.: Lord Bowler sings Amazing Grace to Brisco as he's dying, after being shot in the gut. (He gets better.)
• Barbra Jean from Reba sings it each time she (forcibly) kisses her hot therapist...and the first involved stealing his chewing gum, and the last one (after several hours) he got his gum back.
• Rescue Me: Amazing Grace is played on bagpipes for several funerals, Tommy lampshades it during his father's funeral.
  Teddy: That sounds beautiful.
  Tommy: I've heard that song a million times. If they could play In A Gadda Da Vida, then I'd be impressed.
• In the Death Valley episode "Partners", "Amazing Grace" is played on the bagpipes at the funeral of the cops killed in the siege.
• Amazing Grace with Bill Moyers is an 80-minute documentary about the song and its impact on American culture. Many different performances of the song are included. It aired on PBS in 1990 and is available on DVD.
• In The Stand (1994) , Frannie sings it tearfully as she sews up her father's burial shroud.
• Shameless: During the Season 4 episode "Iron City," a woman at the hospice that Frank visits delivers a folk rendition. We only get to hear a bit of it, though.
• The documentary series Stories from the Stone Age includes a scene depicting what a funeral from the Natufian culture (s people who existed roughly 14 thousand years ago) might have looked like. One Natufian begins playing on a bone pipe—and the first few bars are clearly the melody from Amazing Grace.
• Doc: The song appears in a more religious context in "Busy Man." A harried businessman is admitted to the hospital with pneumonia after neglecting his health pursuing a deal. He claims to have heard an angel singing, and later he hears the same voice singing "Amazing Grace." All efforts to find out where it came from fail until near the end. Doc Cassidy manages to find the singer, an electrical engineer named Angel, and talks her into singing it one last time to comfort his patient, who's dying after breaking his health.
• Doctor Who: In "The Zygon Invasion" The Doctor happens to be strumming the first few bars on his electric guitar when he receives an emergency call from Osgood who's being attacked by Zygons.
• Subverted in an episode of The Waltons, in which Olivia has been recruited as a soloist for a church choir. The choir practices "Amazing Grace", apparently for a regular Sunday service, singing it to a tune that either is actually from Sacred Harp or a good imitation.
• In Season 7 of The Masked Singer, Armadillo sings a brilliant cover of the song.
• CSI: Miami:
  • "Ashes to Ashes": "Amazing Grace" plays during the memorial service for a pregnant woman and her unborn daughter who were killed in a traffic accident.
  • "Lost Son": At the end of the episode, "Amazing Grace" is played on bagpipes as the vehicle procession arrives at the cemetery for the funeral of a fallen team member.

Music

• "Sakura" by Nirgilis inserts a few bars prominently into the beginning, middle, and end of the song as well as having the same line repeated in the background now and then.
• Judy Collins reached #15 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1970 with her a cappella version of this song.
• An instrumental version by the band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards was a huge international hit in 1972. In the UK, it was the best-selling single of the year and was in the UK's all-time top 100 best-sellers list until 2004.
• Carrie Underwood interpolates the entire first verse into the ending of the baptism-themed "Something in the Water".
• Contemporary Christian music artist Chris Tomlin shoehorned the melody into 4/4 time and tacked on a modern sounding praise chorus to create "Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)". Interestingly, his rendition uses the rarely-heard original final verse.
• At a concert for Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday, Opera star Jessye Norman upstaged bands such as Guns N' Roses with a simple and dignified a cappella rendition of Amazing Grace. The crowd was gobsmacked.
• The Piano Guys incorporate the hymn in their cover of Rachel Platten's "Fight Song". The video was filmed on location in Scotland with a pipe and drum corps playing in the background. Jon Schmidt slips in a couple bars of "Scotland the Brave" as well.
• Chris Squire of Yes incorporated an instrumental fuzz bass-and-bass pedals arrangement of the song into many of his live bass solo segments, starting from the mid/late 1970's and throughout his career until his illness and death in 2015. (Possibly incorporating a Stealth Pun - intentional or otherwise - of "Amazing Bass.")
• Kids Praise: They actually get to listen to the pastor who wrote Amazing Grace preach in the seventh album, which is a time travel plot. Then they sing it with him in his church.
• An unlikely Hardcore Punk style version appears on the album Hate Your Friends by the Lemonheads.
• Coldplay uses a recording of Barack Obama singing the song (see Real Life below) in their song "Kaleidoscope".
• Jeff Beck and Roy Buchanan each recorded instrumental versions in their own styles, playing the melody with flair and embellishments. Both are respectful and beautiful renditions.

Radio

• Subverted by A Prairie Home Companion: in one episode, Garrison Keillor and some other people sing "Amazing Grace" to the tune of The Mickey Mouse Club Song (you know, the one that goes "M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E").
• Dallas-Fort Worth radio host Russ Martin uses a version of this song when performing humorous "eulogies" on his show. Case in point, his eulogy for State Fair of Texas mascot Big Tex, which was destroyed by fire in 2012.

Theatre

• The song is sung on two occasions in The Laramie Project, one being Matthew's funeral.
• There was a musical on Broadway about the songwriter's spiritual journey from slave trader to abolitionist, entitled (appropriately enough) Amazing Grace.

Video Games

• BioShock
  • In BioShock, the Rosebud Splicer model sometimes sings the song to herself. Interestingly, she mainly sings the third verse ("The Lord has promised good to me", etc.) which is the one most commonly skipped over nowadays.
  • A choral hymn in 8-6-8-6 meter greets you when you first walk into a church-with-a-capital-C? Must be "Amazing Grace"... wait, what's that? "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" Bioshock Infinite, you sly dog, you!^note The tunes are nearly identical for the first couple of lines, aside from a difference in time signature.
• In Deadly Premonition, the song plays during the Original Raincoat Killer sequence.
• The Game Over screen in Wild 9 has a bagpipe rendition of Amazing Grace playing over it. Followed shortly by the laughter of the little green men.
• The first Yakuza game and its remake plays a cover of this song during the credits sequence (sung by Eri Kawai in the original and Joelle St. David in Yakuza Kiwami).
• One of the trailers for Assassin's Creed III features a version of this.
• Mass Effect 3: In the Citadel DLC, Mordin's repertoire of songs and entertainment includes a rendition of Amazing Grace. He comments that he prefers patter songs.
• Ted sings it in episode 8 of Ambition.
• One of the Apocalyptic Logs in Horizon Zero Dawn has a dying woman slowly, raggedly singing the original last verse ("The earth shall soon dissolve like snow" etc). Between the strain in her voice and the distortion in the recording the tune is less familiar than in many renditions.
• Far Cry 5 has this as practically Joseph Seed's Leitmotif. It's made especially eerie in the opening, where Joseph sings it as the helicopter he and the marshals are in crashes, and again where he prevents the Deputy from radioing for help after the crash. On the latter occasion, there's even an unseen choir singing it in the background, providing a chilling case of Soundtrack Dissonance. He sings it one last time in the Resist ending as Hope County is being nuked.
  Joseph: No one is coming to save you.
• In Police Quest: SWAT, if the player character dies, a bagpiper plays this at his funeral.
• Honkai Impact 3rd uses this at the last stage of Chapter XI-EX when a vision of Himeko appears in front of Kiana. Especially fitting to the lyrics since, at this point of the game, Kiana had lost practically everything, including her will to live due to her Superpowered Evil Side briefly taking over and throwing the world into chaos. The sight of the teacher who did everything she could to save her pulls her back from the brink and gives her the Heroic Resolve to fight on.

Visual Novels

• A version that sounds like it's played on a music box is used in episode 03 of World End Economica at the climax of the failed negotiations between Hal and Chris over the buyout of Bull Stairs, to symbolise that the once-close pair have forever gone their own separate ways.

Web Comics

• The song is mentioned in this Irregular Webcomic! strip in a reference to Spock's funeral.
• In issue #6 of ''The Dreamer", Alan sings Amazing Grace.
• In Life With Lamarr, it gets played by Cubbage and This One at Lamarr's funeral.

Web Original

• Not sung, but quoted in Chapter 7 of Broken Saints, when Raimi is going crazy due to a constant stream of lucid dreaming.
• Paw plays this song on a kazoo during Ma-Ti's funeral in Suburban Knights.
• In the Star Trek: New Voyages episode "Mind-Sifter", based on the 1975 novella by Shirley Maiewski, when the crew must accept that James T. Kirk is dead, Spock (who knows that he is not) asks Dr. McCoy to arrange a memorial service for the crew. At the end, Uhura sings "Amazing Grace", and her voice is heard over scenes of Kirk's vicious torture by the Klingons and his daring escape through the Guardian of Forever, just as we hear the words "And grace will lead me home".
• Mandela Catalogue features a slow, distorted version that sounds as though it were sung by lost souls. Memetic Mutation has led it to be played over anything sufficiently spooky.

Western Animation

• Aversion: Clone High substitutes Franz Schubert's Ellens dritter Gesang (a.k.a. "Ave Maria"). It turns out that Genghis Khan is an amazing tenor.
• Parody: in the Futurama episode "The Sting", Fry's imagined death has his favorite song "I'm Walking On Sunshine", also played by the bagpipes.
• Used hilariously in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, where the Joker eulogizes the believed-to-be-dead Batman, and decides to murder his supposed killer by sealing him into a coffin and rolling it into an acid pool. The end of the scene is accompanied by Harley Quinn playing the song on a kazoo. Given that this is Joker, both conveying genuine sadness and savagely funny mockery of funeral tropes at the same time was likely his intended goal. When they recorded this scene, they were only able to do one take because when Arleen Sorkin (Harley) had finished, everyone was laughing too hard to do another take.
• Parodied in the South Park episode "Ike's Wee Wee": At Ike's funeral, conducted by Father Maxi dressed as a rabbi, the piper plays "Hava Nagila." As the boys walk away from the funeral, Kenny falls in an open grave and is crushed by the tombstone, and the funeral reconvenes around the grave, the priest changes to his normal appearance (Kenny's Catholic), and the piper plays... "Hava Nagila."
• Bottomtooth (the guy from Family Guy with the huge underbite) sings the song after he refuses to sign Brian's petition to legalise gay marriage in Rhode Island.
• In Drawn Together, an instrumental version plays in the background any time a character delivers a moral of some sort.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show played the song in, appropriately enough, "Terminal Stimpy".

Real Life

• A lone bagpiper will show up for many a funeral for police, firefighter, or public servant who dies in the line of duty. And "Amazing Grace" will play.
• Barack Obama referred to the hymn during his eulogy for the fallen victims of the June 2015 Charleston Church shooting. He even tries singing the hymn, with the rest of the attendees joining in.
• After the death of IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon was announced at the last race of the 2011 season, the drivers who weren't involved in the crash that killed him earlier in the race did a three lap salute, driving in parade formation as Amazing Grace and Danny Boy played over the track's speaker system.
• Hindu devotional singer Jeffrey Kagel, known professionally as Krishna Das, has an unusual "Mountain Hare Krishna" chant on his album Pilgrim Heart. A few bars into it, Sting joins in and eventually steers the lyrics into "Amazing Grace." Sting sings "That saved a soul, a soul like me" instead of "a wretch like me."
• NPR's Wade Goodwyn (the reporter with the distinctive Texas twang) was assigned to cover the ceremony honoring the responders who tried to help the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, but couldn't finish because the piping of "Amazing Grace" made him cry:
  When I tried to record the narrative for the story, describing the bagpiper playing "Amazing Grace," my throat closed up at that part, and I couldn't go on. I told the recording engineers to give me five and then try it again. To my frustration, I choked up a second time. Eventually, I got through it. But someone must have called my editor, and a few minutes later the phone rang. It's time to go home, he told me. No, no, I insisted. I need to stay. I think there's other conspirators. He was having none of it. You've done a good job, Goodwyn. Go home to Texas. And so I did. Wade Goodwyn, NPR News.
• Garth Brooks sang Amazing Grace at Joe Biden’s Presidential inauguration, and encouraged everyone to sing along when he repeated the first verse.
• The song is traditionally sung by a professional singer and the audience at the end of the Winnipeg Folk Festival.

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