10 Disturbing Songs You Hear Then Never Forget
1. Song Of Joy - Nick Cave
In a way, this entire list could have been taken up with Nick Cave songs. Whether it's the iconic Red Right Hand or any of the artist's Murder Ballads, Cave has amassed plenty of dark and twisted tracks that rarely have a happy ending.
Song of Joy stands out as a particularly gruesome masterpiece though, a slow-burn, near seven-minute epic about the death of the song subject's wife (the titular Joy) and children. Chronicling how the murderer snuck into the family's house and killed the spouse, the lyrics leave nothing to the imagination, covering how the victim was stabbed repeatedly and 'stuffed into a sleeping bag'. As for the three children, Cave's protagonist repeats that the method of murder was 'much the same as my wife's.'
As the track escalates, Cave's vocals almost glimmer with excitement for the violence to come, coming to a head with apocalyptic background vocals and ominous passages from John Milton's Paradise Lost being scrawled along the walls in blood.
It doesn't get much more disturbing than that.