Laura Wright 
Urban Legends
Can a song be dangerous?
Throughout history, music has been accused of possessing strange powers. Certain melodies have supposedly summoned spirits, encouraged sinful behavior, driven listeners into frenzies, and even lured people to their deaths.
But few songs have acquired a reputation as sinister as “Gloomy Sunday.”
Written in Hungary during the 1930s, the melancholy composition became associated with a disturbing series of suicides. Newspapers reported deaths involving people who had supposedly listened to the song, requested it shortly before dying, or left behind its lyrics or sheet music.
Eventually, it acquired an unforgettable nickname:
The Hungarian Suicide Song.
At least nineteen suicides were reportedly connected with the composition.
Radio stations refused to play it. Rumors circulated that Hungary had banned public performances.
Then, decades after writing the song, its composer took his own life.
Was Gloomy Sunday really cursed?
Or did a tragic song become attached to a tragic period in history?
The Dangerous Power of Music
Blaming music for human behavior is nothing new.
Songs and musical instruments have been viewed with suspicion for centuries. Long before anyone worried about rock music, heavy metal, or supposedly hidden messages on records, the fiddle and violin were sometimes condemned as instruments of the Devil.
The idea goes back considerably further.
Ancient mythology is filled with dangerous music. The songs of the Sirens were said to lure sailors toward destruction. Other traditions associated particular rhythms, melodies, or forms of music with spirits and supernatural forces.
Music has always possessed an unusual emotional power.
A melody can create joy without explaining why.
Another can produce anxiety.
A familiar song can suddenly resurrect a memory that seemed forgotten for decades.
Perhaps that is one reason Gloomy Sunday developed such an enduring reputation.
The song already sounded like grief.
Then people began dying.
Rezső Seress Writes a Gloomy Song
Hungarian composer Rezső Seress created the music in 1933.
The original Hungarian title was Vége a világnak, generally translated as “The World Is Ending” or “End of the World.”
The composition was already bleak.
Then poet László Jávor supplied a different set of lyrics.
Jávor’s version transformed the song into an expression of despair over a lost lover and gave it the title Szomorú vasárnap.
Gloomy Sunday.
The song was not recorded until 1935, when Hungarian singer Pál Kalmár made the first recording.
It was around this period that the darker stories began.
The Suicides Begin
According to the legend, Gloomy Sunday became connected with an alarming number of suicides in Hungary.
Some victims supposedly left behind copies of the sheet music.
Others were said to have requested the song shortly before taking their lives.
Stories circulated of people throwing themselves into the Danube.
One particularly persistent rumor claimed that Jávor’s former fiancée was among those who died, supposedly leaving behind evidence connecting her death with the song.
The number most frequently associated with the early legend was nineteen suicides.
But establishing exactly how many deaths actually involved the song is much more difficult.
Nineteen Deaths or a Growing Legend?
The nineteen-suicide figure has been repeated for decades.
That does not necessarily mean nineteen people killed themselves because of the song.
The distinction is important.
Someone suffering from severe despair may naturally be attracted to sad music. A suicidal person requesting a melancholy song does not demonstrate that the music caused the suicidal state.
There is also the problem of contemporary reporting.
Once newspapers began describing Gloomy Sunday as a suicide song, any death that could possibly be associated with it became newsworthy.
A person dies with unrelated sheet music nearby and it means little.
A person dies with the notorious Hungarian Suicide Song nearby and suddenly there is a story.
The legend could reinforce itself.
Hungary Between the Wars
There was another grim reality behind the stories.
Hungary during the 1930s was experiencing enormous social and economic difficulties.
The country was still dealing with the consequences of World War I and the Treaty of Trianon. The Great Depression brought additional poverty and economic uncertainty, while political tensions intensified as Europe moved toward another war.
Against that background, blaming a song for suicides may have provided a simple supernatural explanation for a much more complicated human tragedy.
Your original article makes precisely this point: some later observers suspected the deaths attributed to Gloomy Sunday reflected Hungary’s existing social misery rather than any sinister power contained within the composition. No formal scholarly study ever established that the song caused the reported deaths.
Still, the stories continued.
Was Gloomy Sunday Banned?
As the song’s reputation grew, so did claims that authorities had attempted to suppress it.
One of the most persistent stories says the Hungarian government banned public performances because of the number of suicides associated with the song.
Stories also circulated about radio stations refusing to broadcast it.
Some of these claims are difficult to authenticate.
But one famous broadcasting ban really did happen.
It involved the BBC.
Gloomy Sunday Reaches the English-Speaking World
English versions of Gloomy Sunday appeared during the 1930s.
Several names became associated with English adaptations or performances of the song, including Sam M. Lewis, Desmond Carter, Hal Kemp, and Paul Robeson.
The English lyrics written by Lewis made the suicidal theme explicit.
That version helped transform the obscure Hungarian song into an international phenomenon.
Then came Billie Holiday.
Billie Holiday and Gloomy Sunday
Billie Holiday recorded what would become perhaps the most famous English-language version in 1941.
Her performance gave the already melancholy composition an extraordinary emotional weight.
By then, the song’s sinister reputation had crossed linguistic and national boundaries.
The phrase “Hungarian Suicide Song” became inseparable from it.
The mythology surrounding Gloomy Sunday was no longer merely Hungarian.
It had become international.
The BBC Bans the Song
The BBC famously restricted Billie Holiday’s version during World War II.
The concern was not that the recording possessed supernatural powers.
Britain was at war, and broadcasters were understandably sensitive to material believed capable of damaging public morale.
Instrumental versions could still be permitted, but the lyrics were considered too depressing for wartime broadcasting. The restriction would remain associated with the song for decades.
That genuine restriction undoubtedly strengthened the legend.
After all, a song already rumored to cause suicide was now literally too gloomy for wartime radio.
Folklore could hardly have asked for better publicity.
Deaths Connected With the English Version
More coincidences accumulated.
Desmond Carter died unexpectedly in 1939.
Hal Kemp died the following year from complications following an automobile accident.
Neither death establishes anything supernatural, of course.
But once a work develops a reputation for being cursed, ordinary tragedies involving anyone associated with it can become incorporated into the legend.
Then came a coincidence far more difficult for storytellers to resist.
The composer himself died by suicide.
The Death of Rezső Seress
Rezső Seress survived the period when his composition first acquired its grim reputation.
He lived for more than three decades after writing Gloomy Sunday.
Then, in 1968, Seress attempted suicide in Budapest by jumping from a window.
He survived the fall.
While recovering in the hospital, he died by suicide.
The man who had written the so-called Hungarian Suicide Song had ultimately taken his own life.
For believers in the curse, Seress’s death seemed like a terrible final confirmation.
But thirty-five years separated the composition of Gloomy Sunday from its composer’s death.
That enormous gap makes a supernatural connection difficult to argue.
It does, however, make the story unforgettable.
Did Gloomy Sunday Cause Suicides?
There is no reliable evidence demonstrating that Gloomy Sunday possessed some unique ability to make listeners suicidal.
No controlled or scholarly investigation established such an effect.
The more reasonable explanation may involve a combination of social conditions, sensational journalism, selection bias, and the emotional circumstances of the people who listened to the song.
Once Gloomy Sunday became known as suicide music, the legend gained momentum.
People already contemplating death may have deliberately chosen it because of that reputation.
Journalists then reported those deaths because of the song.
Those reports made the song more infamous.
And its growing infamy made it even more likely that another distressed person would deliberately choose it.
The legend could perpetuate itself without anything supernatural occurring at all.
Can Music Affect Us?
Rejecting the curse does not mean music has no psychological power.
Obviously, it does.
Music can intensify an existing mood. It can evoke memories, create associations, or become inseparable from particular periods in someone’s life.
That is very different from claiming that one particular composition mysteriously compels otherwise healthy listeners to take their own lives.
Gloomy Sunday is deeply melancholy.
But melancholy alone is not a curse.
Millions of people have listened to the song without experiencing anything more sinister than perhaps deciding that something cheerier might be appropriate afterward.
The Legend Becomes Part of Popular Culture
The legend eventually became almost as famous as the song.
Gloomy Sunday was featured on the Discovery Channel program Dark Matters: Twisted but True.
The 1999 German-Hungarian film Ein Lied von Liebe und Tod, released internationally as Gloomy Sunday, incorporated the song into its story.
The 2006 film The Kovak Box also made use of its sinister reputation.
By then, Gloomy Sunday had become more than a piece of music.
It was an urban legend.
The Hungarian Suicide Song
Perhaps the strangest thing about Gloomy Sunday is that its reputation may have helped preserve it.
Thousands of melancholy popular songs were written during the 1930s.
Most are forgotten.
This one survived.
Partly because Billie Holiday made an extraordinary recording of it.
Partly because the melody itself endured.
But also because generations kept repeating the same disturbing question:
Did this song really make people kill themselves?
Probably not.
Yet the circumstances surrounding Gloomy Sunday created something almost as enduring as a curse.
A composer wrote a despairing melody during a troubled period in European history.
Stories connected it with suicide.
Newspapers repeated them.
Broadcasters restricted it.
Movies and television programs revived the legend.
And decades later, the composer himself died by suicide.
Whether the song was cursed or not, its reputation became impossible to separate from the music.
Nearly a century later, people still press play and wonder what all those other listeners heard.
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