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The Song So Sad, It Could Kill You

11:50 AM GMT 01/02/2008

The Song So Sad, It Could Kill You

Is it Old Shep? Something by The Smiths? Hell, no! Bill DeMain knows it's Gloomy Sunday.

REMEMBER THE OLD Monty Python sketch about "the funniest joke in the world?" Anyone who heard it died laughing. Change the joke to a song and you've got "Gloomy Sunday." Written in 1933 by Reszo Seress (pictured) and Laszlo Javor, this beautifully spooky dirge - nicknamed "the Hungarian suicide song" - killed not with fatal hilarity but a funereal sadness that seeped into the souls of hundreds of susceptible listeners. Like the teenage girl in Vienna who drowned herself while clutching the sheet music of the song. Or the Budapest shopkeeper who hanged himself and left a note that quoted from the lyrics. Or the London woman who overdosed while listening repeatedly to a recording of the song.

Of course, this might all be urban legend. One thing's for sure, though. "Gloomy Sunday"'s composer took his life. But that was later. In 1933, Seress was a struggling songwriter living in Paris. The story goes that after his fiancée dumped him, he went to the piano and out flowed this minor-key ribbon of blue smoke. Seress's friend Laszlo Javor penned an even bleaker lyric for it.

Despite recordings by Paul Robeson and French singer Damia, the ballad initially flopped. That changed three years later, when it was connected to a rash of suicides in Hungary, and was allegedly banned. Short of learning Hungarian and thumbing through Budapest newspapers from the ‘30s, it's impossible to verify this (Hungary does historically have one of the highest suicide rates in the world - approximately 46 in every 100,000 people take their own lives). But it certainly makes for a good story. And it did at the time too, because American music publishers came calling.

Tin Pan Alley tunesmith Sam M. Lewis - best known for chirpy hits like "Dinah" and "Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue" - banged out a translation. Sample verse:

"Soon there'll be candles and prayers that are sad, I know

Let them not weep, let them know that I'm glad to go

Death is no dream, for in death I'm caressing you

With the last breath of my soul I'll be blessing you"

Take that, Marilyn Manson.

Lewis made one concession to commerciality, tacking on a coda that lessened the song's necrophiliac tone: "Dreaming, I was only dreaming / I wake and I find you asleep in the deep of my heart, dear." Yet its tragedy value only increased - especially in 1941 when Billie Holiday recorded the definitive version - and in the early ‘40s, the BBC deemed the song "too upsetting" for the public, then later said that only instrumental versions were suitable for airplay. But when one too many suicides were linked to the song, they imposed a ban which is still in effect to this day.

The song has since been covered by Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Björk and others. And Reszo Seress? When "Gloomy Sunday" hit, he attempted to reconcile with the ex who inspired it. Shortly after, he heard that she had poisoned herself, and - you guessed it - there was a copy of the sheet music of the song nearby.

In 1968, Seress leaped to his death from a building. He left no note behind, though the New York Times was quick to suppose that he'd been depressed at never having another hit as big as his deathly signature song.

Bill DeMain

What do YOU think is the most miserable song ever? Thoughts below, if you can shrug the black dog off for long enough...

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 11:50 AM GMT 01/02/2008

Related MOJO content:

Gloomy Sunday

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  • The Associates did a great version of Gloomy Sunday on Sulk.
    Sadly Billy Mackenzie carried on the myth of the song.

    Posted by Anonymous at 4:28 PM GMT 01/02/2008 Report Abuse

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  • end of the rainbow--Richard and Linda Thompson takes some beating!
    not mention..but I did..black dog nick drake
    anything by Nico -lol

    Posted by tony fisher at 5:20 PM GMT 01/02/2008 Report Abuse

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  • Easy-peasy: Leonard Cohen's 'If It Be Your Will' from 1980's Various Positions is the one for me every time ... I think I shall go into a decline now, in fact ...

    Posted by Peter Muir at 6:00 PM GMT 01/02/2008 Report Abuse

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  • I'm thinking of Townes Van Zandt's "Marie" from No Deeper Blue (there are also sparer versions on Abnormal and Last Rights). Richard Thompson has a few besides "End of the Rainbow," (which is certainly a worthy entry) such as (with Linda) "Withered and Died" and "Died for Love" (There's a great version on Gloom and Doom From the Tomb, vol. 1) "How Will I Ever Be Simple Again?" and "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" from Daring Adventures and Mirror Blue's "Beeswing" all suffuse me with existential terror, as does Pink Floyd's "Time" these days.

    Then again, you've never heard my songs, "Agony," "Crying at Christmas," "Home is Where I Hang My Head and Cry" or "Born Funny-Looking." I'll have to get versions to the magazine and see what you think.

    Of course, "Afternoon Delight" by the Starland Vocal Band almost made me queasy enough to slit my wrists...

    Posted by J.J. Staples at 11:44 PM GMT 01/02/2008 Report Abuse

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  • I only just realised I have this song done by a couple of others:

    Peter Wolf (on Lights Out from 1984) and Rick Nelson on a Best Of.

    I'm gonna listen to them back-to-bak right now.

    Goodbye cruel world.

    Posted by Usedtabef'n'b at 9:32 PM GMT 03/02/2008 Report Abuse

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  • nirvanas you know your right

    or john frusciantes nail the strong wind, that screaming gets me every time, wheres hes so fucked up his voice dosent work, he dosent even sound human

    Posted by zippo at 8:41 PM GMT 01/05/2008 Report Abuse

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  • Hello, I can’t advised how to reckon your blog in my rss reader
    By.

    Posted by federicoselero at 10:22 PM GMT 30/04/2009 Report Abuse

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