A heartbroken Hungarian pianist wrote 'Gloomy Sunday' in the 1930s. Within years the press tied it to a string of deaths, the BBC banned it, and its composer later took his own life.
Hear the 1941 recording that carried the song into English. The BBC found it so bleak it banned Holiday's version from the airwaves.
Composed by Rezso Seress and published in 1933 as 'Szomoru Vasarnap,' with lyrics by Laszlo Javor. Its original title: 'The World Is Ending.'
Seress survived a Nazi labor camp but never matched the song's fame. In 1968, in Budapest, he died by suicide.
Mental Floss traces how a melancholy ballad became 'the Hungarian Suicide Song' and why almost none of the death toll can actually be verified.
A 1936 Time report, suicide notes said to quote the lyrics, estimates from 17 to 100 deaths, and a BBC ban that lasted until 2002.
An audio retelling of the song's eerie reputation and the people caught up in the myth that grew around it.
A trailer for the tribute compilation, a reminder that nine decades on, artists still keep reworking the saddest song ever written.