As much as I don't think Tony dies, I can't really argue that he lives. Either way, I don't think it's reading too much into it: Chase stages everything the way he does too deliberately - everything is significant, though ultimately, the ambiguity with which he leaves us must be accepted, for that too is as significant as the pains to which he goes in order to set the whole thing up. It's all very suggestive, but in the end, as a fictional narrative, we'll never know. To be honest, it's probably best we don't (from my vantage point, anyway).

To put forth my support for the "life goes on" argument, though: keep in mind the show's explorations of existentialism. Tony's sessions with Melfi go into this most prominently, with Melfi questioning why Tony does what he does (he inherited it from his father) and Tony himself questioning what life itself is. His own mother, of course, said life was all a big nothing, which in turn affects AJ, a teen going through the typical flirtatious flings with figures such as Nietzsche and Sartre ("God is dead", he quotes to Carm and Tony in season 2, influenced by what he's reading at school).

Existentialism asks what it is to exist, "to be", and from it comes the eternal conflict between good faith and bad faith - the first is acting upon one's own impulses, beyond social, lawful obligations or questions of morality, while the latter is living under the delusion that we're not at the mercy of our own choice, but of some higher being that chooses our path for us. Throughout the show you've got Tony dealing with this, acting upon his impulses and getting in Shit Creek because of it - fucking Svetlana, murdering Ralphie, killing Christopher; and then the moments he has second thoughts and thinks better of it: when he shops the paedofile soccer coach to the cops and comes home drunk to Carmela, proudly claiming, "I didn't kill nobody".

The pivotal point in Tony's narrative arc is his coma; that's his real life-changing experience. Or is it? The life-change is probably just temporary. Nevertheless, it invokes in him a new love for life, and the "living in the moment" feel that comes in tandem with existential philosophy. Because of the nature of his business, though, that "living in the moment" is pushed to an extreme - his life is in danger, both from New York and the increasing RICO case the Feds are building against him. Quite literally, by the end of the last season, he's living in the moment, looking behind his shoulder, and that optimism that the coma sparked is only a varnished surface to the depression underneath.

In this light, I think the final scene is incredible, primarily for two reasons.

The first: what better way to sum up the existential theme of living in the moment that to simply cut mid-scene, mid-life, mid-song, on a random image of Meadow (significant in choice, random in relevance). The cut-aways to Meadow parking her car invoke extreme tension (I thought she was going to crash outside while Tony, Carm and AJ led the temporarily perfect family life inside), as do the cut-aways to the guy in the Members Only jacket and the two black guys who enter just before Meadow. The tension comes simply from their inclusion - why include it if it isn't necessary to the narrative? The point is, the scene could be just as innocent as it could be grave, but ultimately, it's just the extreme opposite forces within Tony's life compressed into one scene.

The second reason why I think the final scene is incredible is how the ambiguity allows not so much for the several interpretations that have popped up (as to whether or not Tony lives) as for the conflicting fates of each of the main characters: AJ finally has a job but we know fine well how prone to depression and panic attacks he is, how emotionally weak he is; Meadow is happy because she's getting married and she has a career sorted - but on the flip side, she's marrying a gangster's son and becoming a lawyer as opposed to a doctor (and we all know how Tony could do with a family lawyer he can trust); Carmela has resigned herself to be the loyal wife, as she did when first married - but we all know she'll always have to deal with goomahs; and Tony has finally got rid of Phil Leotardo, the primary threat to his life and business - but, again on the flip side, what of his depression and panic attacks? No more Melfi, his consigliere is at the very least comatosed, the two people he was grooming to be underboss are dead (one he killed himself), and his inner circle now consists of Paulie and Patsy - does Tony trust Paulie after their recent delve into "iffy" territory? Don't forget Carlo's just flipped and is working for the Feds in their building RICO case, too.

There aren't any morally satisfactory ends, here, because whatever the case may be, there'll always be something dysfunctional.