GLOOMY SUNDAY

Gloomy Sunday" is a song composed by Hungarian pianist and composer RezsÅ� Seress in 1933, as Vége a világnak (End of the world), with alternate Szomorú vasárnap (Hungarian pronunciation: [Ë�somoruË� Ë�vÉ�Ê�aË�rnÉ�p]) (Sad Sunday) lyrics written by László Jávor. The original lyrics depicted a war-stricken Hungary and a silent prayer to God. Jávor's lyrics are a mourning to a lost lover and a pledge to commit suicide to meet said lover again in the afterlife.

Though recorded and performed by many singers, "Gloomy Sunday" is closely associated with Billie Holiday, who scored a hit version of the song in 1941. Owing to unsubstantiated urban legends about its inspiring hundreds of suicides, "Gloomy Sunday" was dubbed the "Hungarian suicide song" in the United States. Seress did commit suicide in 1968, but most other rumors of the song being banned from radio, or sparking suicides, are unsubstantiated, and were partly propagated as a deliberate marketing campaign.Possibly due to the context of the Second World War, though, Billie Holiday's version was banned by the BBC until the turn of the century.

"Budapest, January 13. Rezsoe Seres, whose dirge-like song hit, "Gloomy Sunday" was blamed for touching off a wave of suicides during the nineteen-thirties, has ended his own life as a suicide it was learned today. Authorities disclosed today that Mr. Seres jumped from a window of his small apartment here last Sunday, shortly after his 69th birthday. The decade of the nineteen-thirties was marked by severe economic depression and the political upheaval that was to lead to World War II. The melancholy song written by Mr. Seres, with words by his friend, Ladislas Javor, a poet, declares at its climax, "My heart and I have decided to end it all." It was blamed for a sharp increase in suicides, and Hungarian officials finally prohibited it. In America, where Paul Robeson introduced an English version, some radio stations and nightclubs forbade its performance. Mr. Seres complained that the success of "Gloomy Sunday" actually increased his unhappiness, because he knew he would never be able to write a second hit." The New York Times, January 14, 1968

The Sad Song's Story ...

THE HUNGARIAN SUICIDE SONG - THE ORIGINAL (GLOOMY SUNDAY)