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Hungary in particular has always had one of the highest suicide rates in the world. It's possible that the times, rather than the tune, inspired many of these suicides: During the Great Depression, suicide rates were at an all-time high, and it could be that "Gloomy Sunday" simply seemed like the right note, so to speak, to go out on. Much later, in 1968, Seress himself committed suicide by jumping out a window, further proof - to some - of the song's strange power.
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Once, a man requested the song at a club, then walked outside while the song played and shot himself in the head. In London, another woman overdosed on barbiturates while listening to the song on repeat. In Vienna, a woman drowned herself clutching the sheet music. Hungary supposedly banned the song from being played, but the suicides didn't stop. Another story claims that either Jávor or Seress's estranged fiancée killed herself with poison, leaving only two words in her suicide note: "Gloomy Sunday." Two men also supposedly shot themselves after listening to a band play it. It looked like Seress and Jávor had finally had a hit song, melancholy as it was.īut then, in 1935, a shoemaker killed himself in Budapest, and supposedly quoted the lyrics to "Gloomy Sunday" in his suicide note. I don't think it would do anyone any good to hear a song like that." But eventually it was recorded by Hungarian pop singer Pál Kalmár and was well-received. One potential publisher responded that "there is a terrible compelling despair about it. However it happened, together the two created "Gloomy Sunday" and tried to sell it. Other stories say that lyricist and poet László Jávor was the heartbroken one, and asked Seress to compose the score for a poem he wrote about his ex. Not every version of the official story is in agreement: Some say Seress's fiancée left him for being a deadbeat musician, and he wrote the song for her. Inspired by this amazing urban legend, Stuff They Don't Want You to Know's very own Ben Bowlin wrote a radio play, originally for the Atlanta Fringe Audio Festival, called " See You Next Time." This eerie and unsettling tale explores what the world might look like if "Gloomy Sunday" really did inspire something dark inside every person.įor a little background, Rezső Seress was a Hungarian composer who was living in Paris in 1933 trying to make it as a songwriter. Written in 1933 and covered more than 70 times, Rezső Seress and László Jávor's " Gloomy Sunday" has allegedly been linked to more than 100 suicides since it hit the gramophones in 1935. But there's one song in a class of its own. Plenty of people have accused songs of spurring loved ones to commit suicide: Bands like Judas Priest and Marilyn Manson can attest to that. The Hungarian song 'Gloomy Sunday' is supposedly linked to more than 100 suicides.