The song and its lyric video were released on September 12, 2017, as the fourth and final single from her debut studio album, Stranger in the Alps, through the Dead Oceans label.

The song follows a narrator describing the death of someone whose funeral she will be singing at, depicting the inescapable grief, anxiety, depression of everyday life.

The track is emotional and melancholic, incorporating acoustic guitar patterns and string arrangements; Bridgers has said the song was inspired by the heroin overdose of her close friend.

[9] Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times lauded "Funeral" as a "a devastating portrait of depression" and called Bridgers "brilliant".

[10] The Washington Post praised the song as "haunting", writing that "the delicate, emotive lilt in [Bridgers's] soothing voice makes her brutally honest revelations enticing".