History DespairEventHorizon / Music

* Music/{{Supertramp}} enjoys these. "Lord, is it mine?", "Rudy" (arguably), and "If everyone was listening are about someone who's on the edge of that horizon, and in danger of going over".

* "Black" and "Jeremy" by Music/PearlJam, from ''Music/TenAlbum''.

* Music/BillieHoliday had a tragic life where she was the victim of rape at age 11, teenage prostitution, abusive partners and severe alcohol, morphine and heroin addiction. All it culminated in her world-weary MagnumOpus ''Music/LadyInSatin'', where she sings about break-ups, unrequited love and all hardships of relationships in her drug-ravaged voice. Only a year after recording this album she would die from liver cirrhosis.

* "Black" by Music/PearlJam, as well as "Jeremy" from ''Music/{{Ten}}''.

* ''Music/TheWall'' by Music/PinkFloyd is just one colossal DEH; the entire album is about a rock star who is constantly hurt within his life, and the mental "Wall" he builds between himself and society. Summed up in the aptly titled 'Goodbye Cruel World', as Pink is having a mental breakdown and going catatonic:

* In LeannRhyme's song "How Do I Live" she implies that ever her lover ever left she would cross the DespairEventHorizon

* [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dRgYd5Mxs0 "Dance with the Devil"]], by ImmortalTechnique. The protagonist rape a random woman in a dark street to be deemed [[IfYoureSoEvilEatThisKitten "worthy"]] to integrate a gang, then is asked to shoot her as witness. [[spoiler: It's his own mother... And they suddenly recognize each other.]]

* Roger Miller's "One Dying and a Burying": One man contemplates suicide to forget the pain of lost love.

* "Scarsick" by Pain of Salvation follows a man who grows increasingly frustrated by the various facets of modern society shown to him through television. Eventually, he decides he's had enough and jumps off the roof of a building in an attempt to shock the people around him back to their senses... whether or not this works is left up to the listener.

* FranzSchubert wrote two song cycles based on the poetry of Wilhelm Müller. The first one, ''Die schöne Müllerin'', ends with its protagonist committing suicide. It's considered the ''happier'' of the two. The second, ''Winterreise'', depicting a man who, having lost all hope, abandons his life to become a homeless wanderer, trudging aimlessly through ice and snow in the middle of winter, is so utterly bleak that the poetry would probably come across as completely over the top on its own, if it were not for the profoundly and devastatingly sincere music that Schubert wrote for it.

* FranzSchubert wrote two song cycles based on the poetry of Wilhelm Müller. The first one, ''Die schöne Müllerin'', ends with its protagonist committing suicide. It's considered the ''happier'' of the two. The second, ''Winterreise'', is so utterly bleak that the poetry would probably come across as completely over the top on its own, if it were not for the profoundly and devastatingly sincere music that Schubert wrote for it.

* "Waffle House" by David Wilcox portrays the titular RealLife restaurant as a haven designed to help its employees cope with whatever depressing event they're dealing with (be it heartbreak, or highway, or some altered state) and stop them from crossing the DEH.

* Music/TheBeachBoys: The album cover of ''Music/SurfsUp'' is based on the statue "End Of The Trail" (1915) by James Earle Fraser, which show an exhausted Native American horseman, symbolizing how their struggle for their land from the white man's greed was over. This also ties in with the enviromental messages on the album.
* Music/TheBeatles' "Yer Blues" from ''Music/TheWhiteAlbum''

* ''Music/TheMessage'' by Music/GrandMasterFlashAndTheFuriousFive, all the lyrics of "The Message" are full of despair.

* Music/BillieHoliday had a tragic life where she was the victim of rape at age 11, teenage prostitution, abusive partners and severe alcohol, morfine and heroin addiction. All it culminated in her world weary MagnumOpus ''Music/LadyInSatin'', where she sings about break-ups, unrequited love and all hardships of relationships in her drug ravaged voice. Only a year after recording this album she would die from liver cirrosis.

* Music/JoyDivision's ''Music/{{Closer}}'', especially the song "Heart and Soul"

* Roger Miller's "One Dying And A Burying": One man contemplates suicide to forget the pain of lost love.

No desire to begin again\\

´% Please alphabetisize examples by the name of the band or artist ´%

* ''Music/TheWall'' by Music/PinkFloyd is just one colossal DEH; the entire album is about a rock star who is constantly hurt within his life, and the mental "Wall" he builds between himself and society. Summed up in the aptly titled 'Goodbye Cruel World', as Pink is having a mental breakdown and going catatonic:
-->Goodbye cruel world,
-->I'm leaving you today.
-->Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
-->Goodbye, all you people,
-->There's nothing you can say
-->To make me change my mind.
-->Goodbye.
* Music/{{Rammstein}}'s song "Wo Bist Du" has the narrator crossing the Despair Event Horizon after the death of loved one.
* JethroTull's song "Locomotive Breath" is about a man who has just crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
* {{Supertramp}} enjoys these. Lord, is it mine?, Rudy (arguably), and If everyone was listening are about someone who's on the edge of that horizon, and in danger of going over.
* Many country and western songs, especially JohnnyCash's songs "Folsom Prison Blues," which is about a man sentenced to life imprisonment and "25 Minutes to Go," about a man who is about to be hanged.
* "Scarsick" by Pain of Salvation follows a man who grows increasingly frustrated by the various facets of modern society shown to him through television. Eventually, he decides he's had enough and jumps off the roof of a building in an attempt to shock the people around him back to their senses... whether or not this works is left up to the listener.
** Also, in the same vein, the extra track off "Entropia," Never Learn to Fly, a song where one of the characters decides that dreaming and striving for anything great will only lead to unbearable pain... at least Plains of Dawn had a hopeful point, however brief.
* Roger Miller's "One Dying And A Burying": One man contemplates suicide to forget the pain of lost love.
* "21 Guns" by GreenDay.
* The entire premise of DepressiveSuicidalBlackMetal.

* Many of DavidGray's songs are either written from the other side of the horizon or are about trying to keep from crossing it, in particular "Holding On".
* The title track from Music/BlackSabbath's ''Paranoid''.

* Music/VanDerGraafGenerator's "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" seems to be the self-narration of a man who cross the horizon, and then commits suicide.
** The non-album single "W", where a man dies of extreme loneliness.
* {{Radiohead}} seem to have built their whole career on this.
* ''Music/TheProtomen'': both Protoman and Dr Light cross this when the Robot Masters drag Proto Man down. Mega Man crosses it when he [[spoiler:kills Protoman and discovers how pathetic and self-serving the people he was trying to save were]]. As a general rule, anyone heroic will either die or cross this particular threshold, maybe both.

* "Waffle House" by David Wilcox portrays the titular RealLife restaurant as a haven designed to help its employees cope with whatever depressing event they're dealing with (be it heartbreak, or highway, or some altered state) and stop them from crossing the DEH.
-->When it's time that we slow up\\
We wrap both our hands around our cup\\
And stay until the feeling goes\\
As long as there's broken hearts and dreams\\
And all of this highway in between\\
The Waffle House will never close
* The entire genres of [[DoomMetal Funeral Doom]] and [[BlackMetal Depressive Black Metal]] revolve around this trope.
** And for a band that combines both styles, there's Elysian Blaze.
* A few Music/IronMaiden tracks. Specially "For the Greater Good of God".
** Their song "Hallowed Be Thy Name" is their most notorious example, telling the story of a prisoner in death row who is just hours away from his execution; he is at first calm and rationalizing about the upcoming ordeal, but as the song progresses he starts to slowly fall apart until he breaks and starts crying, realizing that he is afraid to die after all.
-->Tears fall but why am I crying?
-->After all I'm not afraid of dying.
-->Don't I believe that there never is an end?
* The singer's character in Project Pitchfork's "Lament" has apparently crossed this line after being jilted (or his love interest dying, depending on how it is interpreted), and is preparing to [[DrivenToSuicide off himself]]. "I lay down here, forever to sleep".
* ''The Lost Christmas Eve'' by Music/TransSiberianOrchestra tells the story of a kind, happy man who has pretty much the perfect life. When his wife goes into childbirth on Christmas she dies due to complications, and he also learns that his newborn son suffered brain damage due to lack of oxygen and will probably never learn to walk or talk. This causes the man to go through a major despair event horizon. After [[RageAgainstTheHeavens raging against the heavens]] he gives his son over to the care of a state-run hospital, and [[TheMourningAfter spends the next forty years as a bitter, broken man]] [[TheGrinch who hates Christmas]].
* "Cemetery Gates" by Music/{{Pantera}} is told from the perspective of a man who is going through a despair event horizon following the death of the woman he loved. For most of the song he is lamenting his loss, and in the final verse he is actually contemplating suicide so he can join her in the afterlife.

* "Square One" by Interface:
-->When the hope has gone away\\
When the night has taken hold\\
Emotions are no comfort\\
No shelter from the rain\\
Denied what has been offered\\
An empty hand once more\\
Gaining only to lose again\\
This has all met its end\\
Left here with more broken dreams\\
No desire to begin again\\

* "Black" by Music/PearlJam, as well as "Jeremy."
* "The Mercy Seat" by Music/NickCave is about a man sentenced to death on the electric chair.

* "Black" by Music/PearlJam

* Many country and western song, especially JohnnyCash songs Folsom Prison Blues, which is about a man sentenced to life imprisonment and 25 Minutes to Go, of a man who is about to be hanged.

* ''The Lost Christmas Eve'' by Music/TransSiberianOrchestra tells the story of a kind, happy man who has pretty much the perfect life. When his wife goes into childbirth on Christmas she dies due to complications, and he also learns that his newborn son suffered brain damage due to lack of oxygen and will probably never learn to walk or talk. This causes the man to go through a major despair event horizon. After [[RageAgainstTheHeavens raging against the heavens]] he gives his son over to the care of a state-run hospital, and spends the next forty years as a bitter, broken man who hates Christmas.