Descent into Darkness Song

♫ I wish that he would whisper "ma chérie, je t'aime,"
But all he wants to do is try to fix that plane...
In the City of Love. ♫

And I swear right now
That no matter what comes of me
Anybody who stands or has stood in my path, they are going to pay!
They. Will. Pay.

—Varian, Tangled: The Series

You know how sometimes you're listening to a pretty chipper song, and you think it's gonna stay that way? Sometimes it doesn't. That's what you call the descent into darkness. A Descent Into Darkness Song is a song that changes its tone, slowly or quickly, into something much darker. The evolution of the music can involve modulating from a major key to a minor one as shorthand for a darker style.

If there are words which are consistently upbeat, there may be Lyrical Dissonance at the end; the inverse is also true if they're depressing throughout it. If in a musical, it can be a positive song that becomes sinister when the heroes leave. If the song is wholly cheerful but later sung tragically, you have a Dark Reprise. This can be a form of Villain Song.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• "Princess of December" from UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie. Starts out as a romantic song of eternal love and devotion, sung by the titular Valkyrie, only for it to be hijacked halfway through by her Shadow Archetype, Valkyrie Ghost, who turns it into a heart-wrenching song of loneliness and despair. It's one of the first hints that the Dark Valkyrie is actually a tragic figure, rather than the out-and-out villain she first appears to be. You can hear it here.

Fan Works

• Doki Doki Forever, a fan-made Doki Doki Literature Club! song starts off sounding very happy and upbeat, with very sweet, almost saccharine, lyrics, reflecting how the game is initially a very sweet dating sim. However, the song gets progressively darker starting from the second verse, very much like how the game gets progressively darker in the second act. The song remains upbeat, but gets more distorted and glitchy-sounding as it progresses, and there are also jumpscares and sudden cuts to disturbing images from the game, such as Sayori's suicide, which get more frequent as the song goes on. The lyrics also become more disturbing and often have dark double meanings, such as Yuri's line "Will you make the cut?" also referencing her self-harm.
• "The Moon Rises," based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, is supposed to serve as a Villain Song for Nightmare Moon. It begins with Princess Luna rhapsodizing about the beauty of the night, but slowly becoming more bitter until she decides to make it last forever.
• In Friendship is Witchcraft Pinkie Pie's orphanage song does this. It begins as a happy song, but then Pinkie starts singing about how unworthy she is.
• "AUDIT" is a fan song for The Walten Files that centers around Felix Kranken's descent into alcoholism and its ultimately disastrous consequences. It starts out happy and idyllic as can be...and then Felix starts hitting the bottle.

Film — Animation

• "Big and Loud" from Cats Don't Dance. When it's first sung, Darla Dimple is giving Danny advice to improve his act in order to be famous; once Danny has gone, the song is sung again in a more darker, sinister villainous fashion as Darla shows her true jealous nature against animals.
• In South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, "Hell Isn't Good" starts out with Kenny, who died in an earlier scene, making his way to Heaven, with hopeful lyrics underscoring how Kenny is finally at peace. But when he finally reaches Heaven, the gates reject him and the heavy metal guitar and distinctive voice of James Hetfield kicks in as poor Kenny falls screaming into the bowels of Fire and Brimstone Hell.
  Little boy, you're going to HELL!
  You said bad words,
  threw rocks at the birds,
  and now this is your hotel!
  You aint goin' back!
  This ain't Disneyland!
  It's HELL!
• Inverted in The Nightmare Before Christmas—"Poor Jack" starts as a slow, somber song, with the title character asking "What have I done?" About halfway through, however, he becomes bitter and then, quite suddenly, cheerful, realizing that his failed experiment still managed to get him out of his existential funk.
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Frollo's "Hellfire" song counts as a Dark Reprise of "Heaven's Light", but it also counts alone as this trope. A sacred chant leads into the song, With composure, Frollo sings to the Virgin Mary, "You know I am a righteous man..." and then the song gets darker as he sings of how desire for Esmeralda tempts him. The accompanying chants turn ominous, and Frollo pictures himself condemned. He concludes: "She'll be mine or she will burn!"
• The Little Mermaid's "Poor Unfortunate Souls" could perhaps count. It begins with Ursula trying to play herself off as innocent, but she becomes more Obviously Evil (not to mention bombastic) as it goes on.
• Tangled has Mother Gothel sing "Mother Knows Best" to Rapunzel, which was a wacky Broadway type song, but had insulting lyrics to lower Rapunzel's self-esteem and make her more dependent. However, later in the film when Rapunzel is becoming more independent, and refuses to return to the tower with Gothel, Gothel's reprise of her song noticeably takes a dark turn as she becomes more hostile and insults Rapunzel further.
• The "First Time in Forever Reprise" from Frozen (2013) starts out well enough. Anna finally catches up to Elsa and the two can fully appreciate Elsa's powers for the first time since they were kids. However, once Anna informs Elsa about how the latter accidentally froze over Arendelle during her escape, the song takes a dark turn as Elsa is consumed by guilt and panic. Since Elsa's powers respond to her emotions, her ice powers get so out of control she accidentally strikes Anna right in the heart, almost killing her.
• The Once-ler's Villain Song from The Lorax (2012) gradually becomes darker as the song goes on, starting in his casual worker clothes with his acoustic guitar, to wearing a flashy new business suit, to making huge, polluting factories, to not caring if "a few trees are dying", while you see him destroying said trees with the soundwaves from his new electric guitar, and carelessly hacking down every tree left and right while the forest creatures run for their lives. Not only does the song get so much darker, his voice gets a distinct malevolent echo at the end.
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie: Dr. Applecheek's song "God's Little Creatures" starts off as a gentle, if slightly sad song about how much he loves animals and will do anything to protect them. However, it eventually becomes much more harsh and menacing when Dr. Applecheek turns out to be a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
  Dr. Applecheek: My whole life is animals, from morning till night
  I pity their plight, but I have no... regrets!
  (Dr. Applecheek shoves Tom and Jerry into a cage and throws it to his henchmen)
  Here, boys, take good care of them! (Evil Laugh)

Film — Live Action

• Terminator 2: Judgment Day: A very subtle, very quick version occurs during the mall confrontation scene where both Terminators find John at the same time. Because the movie is playing up the fact that either Terminator could be evil, you hear both of their themes play one after the other. First Arnold's strong metal percussion then the T-1000's low ominous moan. Then, as both of them meet each other with John in the middle, for a brief moment both play on top of each other, adding to the tension of which (if not both) Terminators are evil. Then Arnold saves John and the T-1000's low moan completely takes over. He's our bad guy.

Live-Action TV

• Sesame Street: Big Bird's song "Happy To Be Me" from the "Good Birds Club" street scene starts out optimistic but gradually degenerates further and further into sadness and depression as he gets mocked and bullied by the snarky pigeon president over his appearance.
• The First Sacrifice from the Torchwood: Children of Earth soundtrack starts out soft, whimsical, and lullaby-esque, but shifts in tone halfway through, becoming dark and threatening.
• Game of Thrones: "The jaws of the viper" starts with a solo violin -which is usually a theme reserved only for the Starks when they show their love for each other- played in background while Jaime and Myrcella hug, only to change to a dark tone when Myrcella dies in his arms. The fact that the next shot is of Ellaria Sand, reveals that this is her theme about her revenge on the Lannisters for Oberyn's death.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has "In the beginning", with the title being a Shout-Out to the book of Genesis. The soundtrack starts with a Cherubic Choir, which captures the Paradisiac and innocent state of the world. Then it continues with the climax showing an epic shot of Tirion, before the sudden ominous change in tonality symbolizing the destruction of the two trees of Valinor and the Elves' quest to Middle-earth. The second part of the soundtrack is a Dark Reprise of its lighthearted first half.

Music

• Ennio Morricone's main theme for Adrian Lyne's 1997 adaptation of Lolita starts off sounding like a standard soundtrack for a romantic drama, but the notes become increasingly downbeat and off-key as the music goes on. It does the job of contrasting Humbert's fantasies about Lolita with the twisted reality of their relationship.
• "The End", by The Doors, famously starts off as a ponderous musing about the nature of finality. However, eventually the imagery shifts into describing a masked killer grappling with the desire to kill, and then killing, his own parents. Afterwards, the tempo builds up to the end, creating a mesmerizing climax. Which, incidentally, makes it the perfect song to be used to bookend Apocalypse Now—a descent into the evil that lurks in the human heart.
• Bill Bailey has an OTT Obsession Song that starts a bit depressed. Only a bit, mind you. Then it goes serenely upbeat and joyous, followed by being unbelievably angry and unhappy.
• The Flight of the Conchords song "Petrov, Yelyena, and Me": The lyrics get more disturbing as the singer catches on that Petrov and Yelyena are eating him piece-by-piece.
• Several songs by Stephen Lynch. "Superhero" starts with describing various superheroes kids might want to be before turning into a diatribe against his unfaithful wife who now lives in Hawaii with a doctor, dumping him with three kids and no job. For those interested — song here.
• An instrumental example, Rude Awakening, No. 2 by Creedence Clearwater Revival starts out mellow but becomes more and more spooky as the song goes on.
• Evillious Chronicles: "Wordplay" begins with the singer talking cheerfully about the first time she learned of the world, friendship, and love. Then it slowly cycles through the first time she learned of pain, punishment, lies, and evil, with the video getting darker and grayer as well. It's implied this is the same person who becomes a Mad Scientist in the later song "Moonlit Laboratory".
• Kendrick Lamar's "i" starts out as a comparatively upbeat song about the viewpoint character staying hopeful in grim situations, but it doesn't stay that way. By the end, he's given in, although he does express hope that someone will learn from his mistakes. The big hint that it's moving into significantly darker territory comes when the hook drops in pitch for a deeper, more ominous sound.
• Helen Reddy's hit Angie Baby (written by Alan O'Day) which starts out okay, being about a "touched" girl who uses her radio to keep her company. It soon turns to the girl having to be removed from school and eventually to the subject of potential rape and the vague aftermath that results in the disappearance of the young man, leaving the listener to wonder whether he was killed by Angie with something maybe worse (since Angie has "a secret lover who keeps her satisfied") or she's just imagining him still there. Helen Reddy and singer/songwriter Alan O'Day (Undercover Angel) eventually revealed the truth: Angie was a Reality Warper, and the boy with 'evil on his mind' was not the first she shunted away for her pleasure.
• The song "Handlebars" by the Flobots starts with a young boy innocently bragging "I can ride my bike with no handlebars." As the song continues, the boy grows up and his statements become darker and more grandiose, ending with "I can end the planet in a holocaust."
• The Caretaker made an entire album of this, called "Everywhere at the end of Time". It represents an old man's descent into dementia and uses initially pleasant oldies that become increasingly distorted, discordant, and muddled to represent the patient's deteriorating mind.
• The Megas use this a lot, although the darkness is usually the singer's coming death, as they're Mega Man bosses, rather than turning evil:
  • "Harder than Steel" starts out as an 80s-style pump-up training montage song about an old fighter coming out of retirement for one last bout, with a triumphant, upbeat chorus. It transitions into a slow bridge narrating the old fighter dying in the ring, although at least his town will remember him with honour; the final chorus sounds more like a dirge.
  • "The Quick and the Blue" gets a lot slower when the gunfight actually starts, and the final chorus goes from asking if death wears blue to saying yes, death definitely wears blue.
  • "The Haystack Principle" is pretty bleak throughout, but later in the song, a voice starts ripping into Needle Man, telling him that the terrible things he's done aren't forced on him, but his nature.
  • Noir Episode "GeminEye" has Gemini Man succumbing to Sanity Slippage, gradually losing his identities, culminating in a bridge that's a Private Eye Monologue as Gemini Man concludes that he's not making it out of this and trying to "take the rat out [himself]"; the final chorus is preceded by a gunshot.
  • Inverted with the two-part song "History Repeating Part 1/Part 2 (One More Time)", though; part one is sad and reluctant, with part two ramping up into a more energetic, high-action tone.
• Autechre's songs often change in variation or mood as they progress. Naturally, this can lead to a Descent Into Darkness Song if the mood changes from relatively upbeat to more somber:
  • "Nuane" off of Chiastic Slide starts out with harsh beats, but nonetheless has all of the bouncy Autechre charm to accompany it. Towards the middle, the mood turns a bit more mysterious, and then an assortment of beeping and buzzing noises starts to be heard. By the end of the song, there is nothing but the aformentioned strange sounds as the song fades away.
  • "Under BOAC" from LP5 has constant and somewhat loud percussion throughout, but it begins with cooling and calming synths with a relatively easygoing mood. However, around the halfway point of the song, the percussion picks up, and the mood suddenly changes to sinister with the mellow synths changing to more menacing ones.
  • "Surripere" from Draft 7.30 starts out calm and soothing, being relaxing in an almost mystical sort of way. Then, some scratchy synths start to be heard, but track still maintains its sound. Around minute 4, the track suddenly gets spliced up by loud, twisted beats that go on for the remaining minutes, while the atmosphere noticeably darkens; The soothing textures gradually get replaced with much darker textures that persist until the song ends.

Video Games

• "More Gun" from Meet The Engineer? It starts off as a calm campfire song but VERY quickly turns harsh and ends up sounding like a western duel song. If you are interested, here it is.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has the Clock Town theme. It starts out rather upbeat enough, as the town is mostly going about its business and the townspeople blissfully ignorant that anything's wrong. Sure, the moon is up there glaring at them, but it's way out there. What's it gonna do? The next day, the moon is demonstrably closer than its original position, and that night, closer still. The music is slightly darker to accommodate this. Then, by the third day, the music is outright apocalyptic, since the townspeople have all but fled or given up in terror, and the moon is so close it looks like it could cleanse the planet with one strong snort.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has Hyrule Castle theme, which is the final dungeon of the game. It starts off soft and majestic, with a revision of the Hyrule Castle song from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. As you progress through the dungeon, however, the song gains a bassline that may sound...a bit familiar. Later, the bassline is seamlessly expanded into Ganon's theme, which is overlaid onto the Hyrule Castle theme. From that point on, Ganon's theme slowly takes over, becoming louder and more pronounced while the Hyrule Castle theme becomes softer and more subtle. By the time you're in the stairway before the final battle, Ganon's theme has completely taken over.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds did the same thing as Twilight Princess. Lorule Castle's theme adds more and more to it as you progress, but as you get closer to the end, you hear Ganon's theme as a bit of a bridge in the tune.
• In EarthBound (1994), the infamous Final Boss theme "Cease to Exist" Giygas's and Pokey/Porky's first theme) starts off predictable and vaguely melancholic, then abruptly switches to frantic and disturbing.
• From Portal 2, the track 'I AM NOT A MORON!' fits this trope to a T: it starts out with triumphant, happy electronic tones, but halfway through it switches to a much more sinister tone played by brass and strings, culminating in a Dark Reprise of the turning point in the track, combining both orchestra and electronic music, ending in a much different place than it started. It’s fitting, as it plays in the scene where Wheatley is hooked up into the mainframe and promptly becomes Drunk On Power, preventing Chell from leaving yet again before ultimately knocking her down an elevator shaft.
• In Fishing Vacation, the song that can be played on the cabin's record player starts out as a jaunty, relaxing 8-bit tune, but as the days pass it the music becomes slower and more distorted-sounding.
• Resident Evil 4 has Sorrow, the credits theme. Along with the theme, we're shown the idyllic daily life of the inhabitants of Pueblo prior to the events of the game. Then Las Plagas are introduced and then everything turns for the tragic, with the music becoming suitably dark.
• My House gives the Everywhere At The End of Time treatment to the Doom II Level 1 theme "Running From Evil". After exiting the vanilla house to the GZDoom-enhanced version, it changes to an extended remix titled "Entryway At The End of Time" that progressively exhibits glitches such as skipped beats, swapped or dropped instruments, fudged notes, desynchronized channels, and a guitar line from the Doom 1 song "Sign of Evil". In the subsequent Dark World variants of the house, the song is completely deconstructed into a Drone of Dread-heavy ambient track titled "memory=entryrrrr/////".

Theater

• Frankenstein (2014) has "The Grand Beginning of the History of the Creation of Life", where the titular scientist sets his long-held dreams into motion, to resurrect his dear friend Henri who was executed in his place.
• "Our Love Is God" from Heathers starts out as a sweet and romantic duet between Veronica and J.D. and transforms into a delusional J.D. singing by himself as he murders Kurt and Ram.
• "Living Dead" from Jasper in Deadland is initially about Gretchen and the other dead citizens celebrating being dead and have nothing left to lose. By the end, it becomes Gretchen lamenting the fact that she's dead and has nothing left to lose.
• Merrily We Roll Along has three songs about the increasingly strained relationship between Frank, Charley and Mary. In increasing severity and in chronological order (which is more or less the reverse of their order in performance):
  • "Growing Up" begins as a pleased soliloquy at the piano by Frank about his two friends, but has a markedly more dissonant bridge where he voices his frustrations about them.
  • "Old Friends," a trio in which Frank, Charley and Mary act as Vitriolic Best Buds, with the vitriol contained in a troubled bridge section which descends into a heated argument between the three. The tune of this bridge is earlier reprised with different lyrics as "Like It Was" following a Dark Reprise of the refrain.
  • "Franklin Shepard, Inc." (which begins with the same diegetic piano flourish used in "Growing Up") starts out with Charley in a relatively cheerful though sarcastic mood, but the music stops and restarts wearily, then frantically as he comes to the realization that he's been Saying Too Much and their longtime friendship is no more.
• Six: The Musical has "All You Wanna Do", a poppy Bad Girl Song where Katherine describes her various affairs with the men in her life. However, as the song goes on, Katherine laments that she was just a child that got used and abused by predatory older men until she is sentenced to death at nineteen by her husband Henry VIII.
• "I Believe" from Spring Awakening has its tone darken as the two leads transition from kissing to ambiguously consensual sex.
• In Turnabout Musical, Phoenix's 'Reawakening' song starts out as upbeat as could be, as he's feeling good about his victory in court. It turns downright heartbreaking when he returns to the office to find his mentor murdered.

Western Animation

• "Oh, Bubblegum" from the Adventure Time episode "I Remember You" starts off as a typical stalker song by the Ice King, and descends into a deep look at his tortured, lonely psyche.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Rarity's upbeat song "The Pony Everypony Should Know" from "Sweet and Elite" suddenly ends with her sulking and depressed in her room at the castle when she realizes she wasted all her time enjoying the highlife and never got to finish Twilight Sparkle's birthday gown.
  • The song "School of Friendship" from part 1 of "School Daze" starts off with a sense of optimism and fun, but as the classes become more bland as Twilight sees the methods of teaching the students are not "by the book", it sinks into frustration and boredom.
• The "F.U.N. Song" from the Littlest Pet Shop (2012) episode "Missing Blythe" is initially about Blythe's joy at studying the thing she loves the most, but as it become apparent that's the only thing the students care about, it becomes tiring and anxious before ending on a dull note: "Sometimes fashion can be... a... bore."
• Phineas and Ferb: "City of Love" from "Summer Belongs to You" starts out with a sense of optimism, as Isabella tries to use the stop in Paris as a chance to get Phineas to enjoy the stay and at least have a romantic moment with him. However, her crush is Oblivious to Love and way too focused on trying to get the gang's plane repaired, and her glee slowly degenerates into a dull and gloomy tone as her romantic efforts are all in vain. For a bonus, the background colors go from bright and rosy to muted and dark, and the hearts floating amidst litter the ground and break.
• Steven Universe loves these:
  • In the episode "Steven and the Stevens", the updated version of the title song has the same fun classic rock sound and highlights Steven's bond with the Crystal Gems. It gets dark quickly as Steven explains that he accidentally created an alternate timeline and had to watch other timelines of himself die to get to this point.
  • In the episode "On the Run", the title song starts out as a cheery ode to life on the open road and ends as a clear sign that Amethyst is using unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with her feeling inadequate to the rest of the Gems.
  • The song "Do It for Her" from the episode "Sworn to the Sword" starts off as a typical Training Montage song, but gets progressively creepier as Pearl slowly goads Connie into thinking her status as a human means her life is of lesser value than Steven's, mirroring Pearl's own relationship to Steven's mother, Rose Quartz.
  • The song "What's the Use of Feeling Blue" from the episode "That Will be All" starts off fierce and robotic as Yellow Diamond encourages Blue Diamond to stop mourning Pink and go back to her Diamond duties, then ends on a quavery note as Yellow slowly succumbs to her own bottled-up grief.
  • The song "That Distant Shore" from the episode "Can't Go Back" starts out mellow with Lapis Lazuli recalling how she'd found peace for the first time in a millennia with Steven, but progressively gets darker as Lapis struggles with her trauma keeping her from being able to enjoy the moment.
  • In Steven Universe: The Movie "Drift Away" recounts Spinel's idyllic days playing with Pink Diamond in the garden, to Pink Diamond leaving the garden, to Spinel realizing she'd been abandoned thousands of years later.
• Tangled: The Series:
  • In "Queen for a Day", one of Rapunzel's friends, a young inventor named Varian, is determined to make his father proud of him, which is also the title of his song, and provides the page quote at the top. However an accident in his lab traps Varian's father in crystal. Desperate for help, Varian goes to Rapunzel, who is currently swamped with a natural disaster and other responsibilities for her kingdom (a cataclysmic blizzard based on the legend of the evil Zhan Tiri is threatening to tear Corona apart and her parents are missing), and she sends Varian away. Feeling both bitter and guilty over this accident causes Varian to have a noticeable Face–Heel Turn in the middle of his originally chipper song, ending with a clenched fist, and with a sinister tone where he proclaims that "they will pay".
  • Done more subtly with Rapunzel's song in the same episode, "I've Got This". At first Rapunzel is excited for her Short-Lived Leadership and is certain she can handle the requests of the kingdom folk, but when her suggestions go From Bad to Worse, it sinks into a dull and gloomy tone as she remarks being acting queen will be tougher than she thought.
• Wander over Yonder: In "The Heebie Jeebies" when Wander is freaking out in the scary forest he and Sylvia visit to find a secret power to fight Dominator, Sylvia suggests he sing himself a song to get his mind off things; he takes her word and begins singing. The song starts out calm and soothing at first, but as his fear begins to get the better of him, it gradually degenerates into an anxious and worrying tone, ending with full-blown terror complete with him screaming the last words.

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