KAFM Notes: Have you heard the noose?

Songwriters are a dour lot.You doubt it? Then consider this: During the past century, literally hundreds of songs about suicide have been penned by crestfallen composers and lachrymose lyricists. It seems the world of popular music is always ready for another bulletin from the ledge, another hymn for the haunted, another melodious goodbye to this cruel world. The Downbeat Goes On.

Some songs seem to advocate suicide, like Ozzy Osbourne’s controversial “Suicide Solution,” which landed the Ozzman in court not once, but twice, when he was sued in 1985 and 1991 by the parents of two troubled teens who reportedly ended their lives after listening to the infamous song. (Both cases were eventually dismissed.)

Some songs are about individuals who have committed suicide and the effect their self-killings have on the people around them. Examples include Simon and Garfunkel’s 1966 musical adaptation of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Richard Cory;” Bobbie Gentry’s Top 10 classic from a year later, “Ode to Billie Joe;” and Eminem’s nihilistic “Stan” from 2000’s “The Marshall Mathers LP.”

For most songwriters and listeners, the suicide song seems to offer a sort of pop catharsis, a vaguely synecdochic stand-in for the “real thing.” One can listen to a suicide song, cry and then carry on another day, bolstered by the knowledge that there are others out there who share one’s feelings of despair. As Nietzsche wrote in “Beyond Good and Evil:” “The thought of suicide is a powerful solace; by means of it one gets through many a bad night.”

Some songwriters took their self-destructive lyrics to the tragic next step. The British band Badfinger, who first sang the lyrics “I can’t live/if living is without you,” saw two of its members hang themselves, in 1975 and 1983. Another death-obsessed singer who wound up at the wrong end of a noose was Rozz Williams, who fronted the early goth band Christian Death; one of their best-known songs was “Invitation au Suicide.”

Then, of course, there was Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain whose “All Apologies,” “You Know You’re Right” and “I Hate Myself and Want to Die” all seem to glow with a suicidal passion in the hindsight engendered by his own shotgun seppuku in 1994.

Another musician who killed himself was less well-known but arguably more important in the history of suicide. On Jan. 13, 1968, Hungarian pianist Rezso Seress leaped to his death from the window of his small Budapest apartment, two months after his 69th birthday. Seress’ importance can be attributed to a single song he had written 35 years earlier — a song that is probably the most infamous suicide song of all time.

“Gloomy Sunday” has been recorded by hundreds of artists ranging from Paul Robeson to Elvis Costello, but it is certainly Billie Holiday’s 1941 recording which is considered the acme nowadays. Seress wrote the music to “Gloomy Sunday” and fellow Hungarian Laszlo Javor wrote the original lyrics, but it is an English translation by Sam M. Lewis that is the version known best by the west. “Gloomy Sunday” will be examined in detail this week on KAFM’s Notes, by Craven who, like the late George Carlin, “couldn’t commit suicide if my life depended on it.”

Notes is supported by the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, promoting the success of after-school programs throughout Colorado in cooperation with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Notes can be heard daily on KAFM 88.1 or at kafmradio.org on the Web.