Gloomy Sunday

Poet László Jávor wrote his own lyrics to the song, titled Szomorú vasárnap (Sad Sunday), in which the protagonist wants to commit suicide following his lover's death.

The basis of Seress's lyrics is a reproach to the injustices of man, with a prayer to God to have mercy on the modern world and the people who perpetrate evil.

"[9] The song was published as sheet music in late 1933,[10] with lyrics by poet László Jávor, who was inspired by a recent break-up with his fiancée.

[11] His lyrics contained no political sentiments, but rather were a lament for the death of a beloved and a pledge to meet with the lover again in the afterlife.

[16] Press reports in the 1930s associated at least 100 suicides, both in Hungary and the United States, with "Gloomy Sunday",[3][5][17] but most of the deaths supposedly linked to it are difficult to verify.

The urban legend appears to be, for the most part, simply an embellishment of the high number of Hungarian suicides that occurred in the decade when the song was composed due to other factors such as famine and poverty.

A cover of "Gloomy Sunday" is featured on track three of Venetian Snares's 2005 album Rossz Csillag Alatt Született.

[33][34] The song inspired the 2006 movie The Kovak Box, in which a writer is trapped on the island of Mallorca with people who are injected with a microchip that causes them to take their own lives when they hear "Gloomy Sunday".

[36] In 2008, Belgian artist Marieke Van Wuytswinkel used a sample of "Gloomy Sunday" in her work A Natural Morning.