Gloomy Sunday (with Teddy Wilson & His Orchestra) - Take 1

This was written in 1933 by the Hungarian pianist and composer Rezso Seress, with Hungarian lyrics added by the poet Laszlo Javor. In 1936 Hal Kemp And His Orchestra recorded the song with English lyrics by Sam Lewis. Also in 1936 Paul Robeson recorded it with alternate lyrics. Holiday popularized the song with her version in 1941.

This song is quite morbid, and the second verse contains an explicit reference to suicide: "My heart and I have decided to end it all." Holiday's version added a third verse to take the edge off in which she sings about how she was "only dreaming," but her delivery was quite convincing when she sang about despair; Holiday dealt with alcohol and drug problems for most of her life, and had many personal demons to contend with.

Other artists to record this include Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Sinead O'Connor and Björk. One surprising rendition is by Ricky Nelson, who recorded the song in 1958 when he was 18 years old. Nelson was part of a family of entertainers who starred as themselves on the popular TV series The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie (Ricky's dad) wouldn't allow his label, Imperial, to release the song, since he knew Ricky had many young fans and he didn't want them to consider suicide. In our interview with Ricky's son Matthew, he said: "It's so haunting, and Ozzie said kids will be throwing themselves out of windows because our dad had such an unbelievable impact on popular culture and kids at that point. Ozzie said, 'We can't release this, it's irresponsible. I don't want to censor it, but people will die if this song gets out there.'" The song finally appeared in 2001 on the compilation Ricky Sings Again.