Suicide

Suicidal Lyrics

The issue of whether music with suicidal lyrics should be banned has caused much controversy. Restrictions exist in many countries about the reporting of suicide in the news media in order to ensure that such reporting does not encourage further suicides. However, there are usually no such legal restrictions with regard to music, apart from the requirement in some countries that albums containing explicit content be clearly labeled. Even in cases where censorship has been exercised, banned materials are still accessible on the Internet.

One of the earliest 20th-century examples of a purported link between suicide and music is that of “Gloomy Sunday,” also known as the “Hungarian suicide song.” The song was written in 1933 by a Hungarian composer, and contains lyrics in which the singer contemplates committing [Page 1084]suicide to be reunited with a lover who has died. It has been rerecorded by various artists since then, and was used in film. However, numerous cases of suicides involving the music have been reported, and it was banned by the BBC in England until 2002.

In more recent decades, musicians have been the subject of lawsuits claiming that their music triggered the suicide of some of their fans. In 1985, two young men from Nevada committed suicide after listening to an album by heavy metal band Judas Priest. The boys' parents later sued Judas Priest and their record company, claiming that the music had incited the young men to take their lives; the case was lost. Similarly, a case against singer Ozzy Ozbourne, claiming that his song “Suicide Solution” had driven a teenager to suicide, was rejected by the Los Angeles Superior Court in 1986. Emo music has also been the subject of criticism after the double suicide of two teenage girls in Australia in 2007.

Suicidal Tendencies

Of additional concern is that when troubled musicians commit suicide, fans may be inspired to do likewise. This is known as the Werther effect, after a character by Goethe, whose suicide was reportedly emulated by many copycat suicides. The suicide of Kurt Cobain from the rock band Nirvana in 1994 led community leaders to fear a resulting increase in suicide rates. Similar fears were held with the death of INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence. However, evidence that such deaths actually impact suicide rates is minimal.

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