History HarsherInHindsight / Music

* On January 2002, Brazilian pop duo Claudinho & Buchecha released a song "Fico Assim sem Você" ("Without you, I stay like this"), which compares a missing loved one to various things, such as "football without a ball" or "[[WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes Sylvester the Cat without Tweety]]". One of the lines has Buchecha comparing the loss to him without Claudinho... which had a completely different meaning after Claudinho died in a car crash five months after the song's release.
* Music/YokoOno's "Walking on Thin Ice" is a song about the unpredictability of life and death and the last song Music/JohnLennon worked on. He was shot to death the day he finished recording it and died clutching the completed mix of the song in his hands.
* In August 2009, critically acclaimed indie-punk rocker Jay Reatard released his second solo album, ''Watch Me Fall''. A little over five months later in January 2010, he died in his bed of cocaine toxicity, after a tumultuous year that culminated in the firing of his entire live band.
* One of Music/BritneySpears's early singles, "Lucky" talks about an actress [[LonelyAtTheTop who has fame, beauty, awards...and soul-crushing loneliness.]] Given the singer's [[CreatorBreakdown later breakdowns]], the song takes on a creepy air of foretelling.
** "Mona Lisa (Demo Version)" also has an extra meaning after the well-publicized erratic behavior and meltdowns:
-->''About Mona Lisa, and how she suddenly fell (huh)\\
See everyone knew her, they knew her oh so well\\
Now I am taking over, to release her from her spell\\

* One of Music/JohnDenver's most well-known songs is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ToC8pQrCY "Leaving on a Jet Plane."]] He died in a plane crash.

* One song from Music/{{Queen|Band}}'s debut album, "Great King Rat," features an apparent AuthorAvatar who quotes several other songs on the album and "died syphilis, forty-four on his birthday." Two decades later, the writer and lead singer would be dead at forty-five from a venereal disease.
** An even worse moment came in their ''Live At Wembley Stadium'' concert, where Freddie Mercury told fans that "we're going to stay together until we fucking well die, I assure you." This became the saddest section of the concert and its album release.
** "I'm Going Slightly Mad" seemed like another lighthearted Queen song when it appeared on their final album, ''Innuendo''- before Freddie's illness was widely known about. When later replayed during the tribute concert, the possibility of its reference to some form of AIDS-related dementia (something which has apparently been confirmed since) was more obvious and chilling.
** Since Queen's popularity in America had been flagging in the late eighties, Freddie Mercury reportedly said to Brian May, "I'll probably have to die before we're popular there again." This turned out to be true.
** "Who Wants to Live Forever" seems a lot more awkward when you realize that, apparently, Freddie Mercury didn't want to hard enough.\\
\\
Speaking of which, the song (along with other Queen's songs) was used in ''[[Franchise/{{Highlander}} Highlander II: The Quickening]]'' which was given its American Release Date of November 1, 1991. Freddie died on November 24 of the same year. This song was also used in Freddy's biopic ''Film/BohemianRhapsody,'' playing over the scene where Freddie gets his AIDS diagnosis, which may be seen as invoking this trope.
** Sure, it's a Brian May song, but it's difficult not to associate the title (and, to a lesser extent, the [[http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/13158/ lyrics]]) of "Too Much Love Will Kill You" with Freddie's illness. As a 1984 Freddie Mercury solo song called "Love Kills".
*** "My Love Is Dangerous" was a track from Mercury's 1985 solo album ''Mr. Bad Guy''.
** ''Made In Heaven,'' the posthumous album, start to finish. "Let Me Live", "Made In Heaven", "My Life Has Been Saved", "Too Much Love Will Kill You", "It's A Beautiful Day", and "Mother Love".
*** Ironically, despite popular belief, many the album's tracks ''aren't'' Freddie's final (post-Innuendo) recordings, of which there wasn't an album's worth. They're based on previously-released tracks and unreleased demos, some dating back as early as 1980 ("It's a Beautiful Day"), long before his likely HIV diagnosis. Whether this makes the content more or less poignant in hindsight is open to question.
** A good chunk of Innuendo is like this, Songs in particular: "Delilah" (about one of Freddie's cats), "I'm Going Slightly Mad", "The Show Must Go On"
** "Play The Game" contains "My love is flowing through my veins". Seeing as most people associate AIDS and blood this line can be a little bit uncomfortable...
** Listen to the album track "Khashoggi's Ship" from Queen's 1989 album ''Music/TheMiracle'', and lines like "I'm in pretty good shape" and "no one stops my party" play as this in light of Mercury's death a few years later (the song was recorded in 1988, Mercury had been diagnosed with HIV in 1987, though he kept it a secret from the band until 1989).
** Though Brian wrote the song as a tribute to a neighborhood cat he befriended as a child who passed away, some of the lyrics of "All Dead, All Dead" might apply to Mercury as well.

* The song ''Fiction'' from Avenged Sevenfold's ''Nightmare'' album, released after drummer Jimmy 'The Rev' Sullivan's death, is painful enough - but when you discover that the song was originally entitled Death and was the last song Jimmy worked on, only 3 days before his death, with lyrics such as "I know you'll find your own way when I'm not with you", the whole song becomes absolutely heartwrenching.

* Famous singer Music/SineadOConnor's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCOIQOGXOg0 controversial Saturday Night Live poem]] about world injustice and child rape ended with her ripping a picture of Vatican Pope John Paul II. The corrupt stories about the Vatican were unknown to the large majority of people at the time. Years after she was vilified and temporarily ran out of the music business, stories about child abuse and child rape by Roman Catholic priests - and the cover-up afterwards - got exposed to the mainstream public.

* The chorus for Mindy [=McCready=]'s "Oh Romeo" - "Oh Romeo/Who would lay down her life?/Swallow the poison, pick up the knife/Maybe I cried/Just a teardrop or two/I would not die for you/I would not die for you..." - is, like the whole song, a lot harder to take considering that in 2013, not long after her boyfriend died of suicide, she died of suicide as well.
* Music/CourtneyLove (controversial wife of Music/KurtCobain) was in a band called Hole, which released an album called ''Music/LiveThroughThis'' on April 12, 1994 - only four days after Kurt Cobain was found dead in his home. To make matters worse, one of the songs (entitled "Rock Star", a thing Kurt was never comfortable with being) has a line "Barrel of laughs to be Music/{{Nirvana}}, hope you'd rather die". Even if you're aware that the album was completed before Kurt died, it's still pretty creepy (especially with the conspiracy theory [[NeverSuicide accusing Courtney of having murdered Kurt]]). And to add insult to injury, Hole's bassist, Kristen Pfaff, died of a heroin overdose two months later.

** The 2017 album ''New Facts Emerge'' includes a track called "Victoria Train Station Massacre" - the official track-listing to the album was announced a week after a suicide bombing outside an Music/ArianaGrande concert in Manchester Arena, a venue adjacent to Manchester Victoria railway station. The song was written, recorded, and titled long beforehand, the title referring to Mark E Smith's aesthetic disapproval towards the station's recent reconstruction.

* Post-metal band Music/{{Isis}} formed in 1997, naming themselves after the Egyptian goddess. By 2014, the band had long broken up, but their name started carrying rather different connotations due to the existence of ISIS, the Islamic terrorist group - it doesn't help that the band had usually stylized their logo in all capital letters, making it look like an acronym. Their Facebook page, which was mainly being used to promote former band members' other projects at that point, started being inundated with angry comments apparently confusing them with the Islamic State, and fans noted being understandably reluctant to wear their t-shirts in public anymore. They did take a small measure against the Facebook issue, changing the name of their page from "ISIS" to the less ambiguous "Isis the band".

* Miss Kittin & The Hacker's electroclash single "Frank Sinatra" was originally released in July 1998 and featured the lyric "You know Music/FrankSinatra? He's dead" - Sinatra was still alive when the song was recorded, but passed away two months before it was first released. Miss Kittin has said she meant the reference as a ShoutOut (and as a [[PainfulRhyme very loose rhyme for]] "VIP area"), but apparently genuinely thought he was already dead when she wrote the song.

* Music/BradPaisley and Music/LLCoolJ's 2013 duet "Accidental Racist" [[CluelessAesop was criticized for its awkward handling of a complex topic - namely, the lingering effects and divides from America's nasty history of slavery and racial segregation]], which included Paisley's character trying to explain why he's wearing a Confederate flag shirt. It got worse after the 2015 AME Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, when a white supremacist attacked the historically black church hoping to spark a "race war", brandishing the Confederate flag. This attack wound up destroying the flag's credibility as a symbol of Southern heritage, as governors and state legislatures agreed to take down their confederate flags.

* The Gits' "Sign Of The Crab" seems to be about being a victim of a serial killer - it was recorded two months before vocalist Music/MiaZapata was murdered, and released on an album the band had to finish without her. The lyric "Go ahead and slash me up / 'Cause you know you're the one who won't be found" can come across as particularly eerie since the case was cold for 11 years before stored DNA evidence led to a conviction.

* The title track to Amy Grant's 1994 album "''House of Love''" could fit. The song's chorus (inferred to be about a couple going through a rough patch in their relationship). Where this fits is the fact that the song was a duet with country singer Music/VinceGill. A few years later, both Grant and Gill divorced their respective spouses (Gary Chapman for Grant; Janis Oliver for Gill) and soon afterward married each other, which - especially for Grant's primarily Christian audience - sparked a brief scandal in the process due to rumors swirling that they were cheating on their spouses with each other.

** His solo song ''Drink or Die!!!'' - at the time of his death, he was also suffering from alcohol poisoning - which possibly ensured his death as in he most likely passed out from the alcohol before he could free himself to breathe again.

** His character's role in Music/XJapan's original PV for ''Week End'' involved being stabbed or shot in the chest/torso, collapsing and dying as a result. It was later noted after his death that despite the official story that he hung himself with a bedsheet, he had no scars on his neck - but he did have tape marks on his face, combat wounds, and a small red mark/slash on his chest.
** His work on the lyrics of ''Voiceless Screaming'' for Music/XJapan and the various remixes of it he made for his solo bands - though Toshi was the main writer - foreshadowed his downward spiral into illness and addiction.
** His song for Music/{{Loudness}}, ''Black Widow,'' - because of Kitami Terumi and her involvement with stealing the last of his money, trying to scam people in his phone contacts for money ''as he was dying,'' and likely with his death at least by inaction (not informing anyone of his epilepsy) or even possibly via directly getting someone to kill him in jail.
** His song for his solo band D.T.R., ''Empty Room,'' a poignant description of depression/loneliness/mental illness/falling through the cracks of mainstream society. Which was how he lived, right up until he died.

** It gets worse - on the day John Lennon was murdered, he recorded an interview for ''Rolling Stone'', in which he made a reference to "when I'm dead and buried - which I hope is a long, long time from now." In the same interview, Lennon also talked of how much hope he had for the 1980s and how he looked forward to the new decade.

** Even a band name got hit by this trope - Katrina and the Waves.

** "Punk Rock Classic" from the Music/RedHotChiliPeppers. The song takes swipes at bands (specifically Music/GunsNRoses) that claim to be underground but really want to be on MTV, make videos, and release radio-friendly ballads. After "Under the Bridge" came out and the band got big, the Chilis became exactly what they had mocked. To add to that irony, GNR's Slash originally didn't like "Sweet Child O'Mine" - the riff mocked at the end of "Punk Rock Classic" - because he felt it was too poppish.

* Music/{{Metallica}} recorded "Trapped Under Ice" in 1984. Two years later, bassist Cliff Burton died in Sweden - crushed instead of frozen, but the lyrics are still unsettling ("Freezing, can't move at all, screaming, can't hear my call, I am dying to live").

** He's the leader, he's the leader, he's the leader of the gang, he is...Get two aneurysms to the price of one when realizing that the distinctive "yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah" of "Do You Wanna Touch Me" was musically cited in "Bloodsports for All" by...Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. (Carter USM couldn't know - their single came out years before Glitter got busted.)
** {{Music/ACDC}} had a track on its debut album about groupie sex called "Little Lover" that featured the lyric "You had my picture on your bedroom wall / Next to Gary Glitter, yeah." While the reference was almost certainly intended as a comment on AC/DC's growing popularity, combined with the song title it sounds {{Squick}}y in light of the allegations against Glitter.

* Music/{{Sparklehorse}}'s Mark Linkous committed suicide by gunshot in 2010. All of a sudden, a whole slew of songs from his career became {{TearJerker}}s - but the hardest to take was [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xQSWpLCcpE Pig]]. "I wanna try and die, I wanna try and die..." And that's not counting [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3GCYWiz7Dk&feature=related this brief documentary]].

* You Say Party! We Say Die! drummer Devon Clifford died after suffering a brain hemorrhage on stage in 2010. Naturally their band name no longer seemed appropriate - the band continued on without him, but shortened their name to You Say Party out of respect.

%%** Soul Central. feat. Kathy Brown - "Strings of Life" (youtube video)

%%** Music/LauraWhite - "You Should Have Known"

* Music/TheyMightBeGiants' "Marty Beller Mask" is a tongue-in-cheek song about Music/WhitneyHouston escaping from the limelight by posing as TMBG drummer Marty Beller with the aid of a LatexPerfection mask. Houston's death, which occurred just six months after the song's release, caused them to permanently retire the song from their live sets - they also temporarily pulled [[http://youtu.be/ayV6Vg-_80s the music video]] from youtube, but later re-uploaded it.

* While the video was released in about 6 months after Jenny survived a home invasion, one of the songs recorded Music/AceOfBase debut album was titled "Living in Danger", which was done in 1993. The video had a woman in fear that she was about stalked by a man [[spoiler: a former fighter pilot seeking redemption]], and Jenny was watching the woman in question. It was a woman who attacked Jenny in [[OhCrap real life]], who targeted Malin. Malin wasn't there at the scene but it did have an [[CreatorBreakdown effect on her mental health]].
* "The Bonnie Ship the Diamond" is a cheery sea chanty about going whaling on a (real) ship named ''The Diamond''. "Here's a health to the ''Resolution'' / Likewise the ''Eliza Swan'' / Here's a health for the ''Battler o'Montrose'' / And the ''Diamond'', ship of fame," Within a few years at most of the song being composed (the ''Diamond'' was launched in 1825), only the ''Eliza Swan'' was still afloat, and her barely. In 1830, a major weather event sunk most of the British whaling fleet, including the ''Resolution'', the ''Diamond'', and the ''Rattler of Leigh'' (the name of that ship appears to have been changed for the song to make up scansion).

** "It's All About The Pentiums" [[TechnologyMarchesOn is dated in a lot of ways]], but one way, (which is similar to the "Christmas at Ground Zero" example) is the line "And postin' 'Me too!' like some brain-dead AOL-er"[[note]]The line following it, "I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller" [[CaptainObvious also does not help]][[/note]]. The line is about [[MeToo forum speak]], but can easily be confused with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeToo_movement #MeToo movement]], a movement against sexual harassment.

* Rapper Mystikal rose to fame with the 2000 megahit "Shake Ya Ass", featuring such [[IntercourseWithYou raunchy lyrics]] as "[[ADateWithRosiePalms I came here with my dick in my hand]], don't make me leave here [[AssShove with my foot in yo' ass]]". Three years later, he was convicted of sexually assaulting his hairstylist and sentenced to six years in prison, along with having to register as a sex offender for life. [[FromBadToWorse More recently]], as of 2022, he has been charged with first degree rape and faces life in prison if convicted.