Join Me in Death

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"Join Me in Death" is a song by the Finnish band HIM. It was also released as "Join Me", since they weren't allowed to include "Death" in the title for the US version. The album it appears on, 2000's Razorblade Romance, was labeled with a parental advisory sticker despite the change. This song was released as a single and is the band's best-known song in Europe, where it made HIM a household name after being featured in the sci-fi movie The Thirteenth Floor.

Four versions of the song's video exist: three "lazer versions", two of which includes different scenes from the Thirteenth Floor movie., and the fourth - "ice version", with a vague Romeo and Juliet theme also attributed to the song. This has met with controversy regarding its subject matter. "A couple of people blamed me for a suicide someone committed over here saying that 'Join Me' is an invitation to kill yourself," HIM frontman Ville Valo told the European magazine Metal Hammer in 2003. "What I was trying to do was sort of rip-off 'Don't Fear the Reaper' by Blue Öyster Cult, making a rock track of Romeo And Juliet."^[1] Lyrics such as "Would you die tonight for love?" have contributed to the misconception that the song is about suicide, which Valo denies, claiming the lyrics refer to giving things up for the sake of love. "It's not about suicide, that song. It's about giving it all away," Valo told the magazine Modern Fix.^[2]

"I think this is one of the weaker tracks on the album," Valo has also been quoted as saying. "The piano is nice, but maybe the song doesn't mean anything to me because it's not about real life. This is an old song—the first demo was done in January '98—and I've already gotten sick of it, because it's just the same simple thing over and over." ^{[citation needed]} The song was jokingly called the "Funny Song" by the band for a while because they never thought it was that good of a song, despite its contribution to their popularity.^{[citation needed]}

In addition to its release on Razorblade Romance and in the film The Thirteenth Floor (though not on its soundtrack), "Join Me" was included on the Resident Evil: Apocalypse soundtrack in 2004. The band Gregorian covered "Join Me" with Amelia Brightman (also known as Violet Brightman) on their album Masters of Chant: Volume III. Another Gregorian version exists with vocals performed by Violet.