Name: 20 Disturbing Songs Because of What We Know Now
Uploaded: 2025-01-20T11:00:45.000Z
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Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for pieces of music that, in light of dark events that occurred after their release, now induce chills.

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Leave Out All The Rest – Linkin Park A staple of the early 2000s nu metal scene, it can be argued that Linkin Park's success outside of that genre was due in large part to lead singer Chester Bennington's soul-bearing, unflinching songwriting, as well as his powerhouse vocals.

Bennington took his own life in July 2017, just two months after Soundgarden frontman and his close friend Chris Cornell had done the same.

Knowing that makes it difficult, then, to listen to Leave Out All The Rest from the band's 2007 album, Minutes To Midnight, without a teary eye by the end.

A stirring, heartfelt rock ballad, Leave Out All The Rest implores listeners to remember the good times.

My Ding-A-Ling – Chuck Berry Here's a tune that works on many levels, for better or worse.

Berry, the rowdy 50s rock and roll pioneer, had hit a career slump by the 1970s, mining the nostalgia of his earlier records to diminishing returns.

His cover of this extremely silly novelty song represented a new career high for Berry, becoming his only song to top the Billboard Hot 100.

This song took on an unfortunate new layer when Berry faced a 1990 class-action lawsuit, owing to his ownership and management of the Southern Air restaurant in Missouri.

The lawsuit, filed by Berry's female employees, alleged that the singer had quietly placed a video camera in the women's restroom.

Berry settled out of court for $1.2 million.

So Many Tears – Tupac Much like his contemporary arch-rival Biggie

Smalls, Tupac Shakur seemed to be preoccupied with death and dying.

This was most commonly in the context of the Los Angeles gang violence he so often lamented, but he often contemplated his own passing.

So Many Tears stands out in the rapper's catalogue in its crystallization of the themes the influential performer often covered.

Notably, the song features Tupac bluntly addressing his personal desire to end his life, as noted by Rolling Stone's Chio H. Coker.

So Many Tears deals with the senseless violence that marked his childhood, but with the internal demons that threatened to consume him, snapping at his conscience like hellhounds on a bluesman's trail.

Pretty Noose – Soundgarden In what emerged as a heartbreakingly common pattern for grunge frontmen, Soundgarden and Audioslave lead singer Chris Cornell's death was untimely.

The Black Hole Sun vocalist took his own life after a 2017 concert in Detroit.

While Audioslave's later Like a Stone might hit harder for Cornell's fans who are still mourning, Pretty Noose catches its listeners' ear due to its unfortunate association with the method by which Cornell ended it all.

However, beside that, the song otherwise bears no indications of ideation.

Cornell once described Pretty Noose as being about an attractively packaged bad idea, something that seems great at first, and then comes back to bite you.

Murder On My Mind – YNW Melly On its own, Murder On My Mind serves as a catchy, if painfully dark, meditation on inner-city gang violence.

Melly spins a descriptive, first-person tale about what it means to take a life.

While it was mere fiction at the time of its writing in 2016, Murder On My Mind was subject to renewed attention when its performer was charged with double homicide in February 2019.

Posting to his official Instagram account shortly after turning himself in, Melly reassured fans that, unfortunately, a lot of rumors and lies are being said, but no worries, God is with me and my brother.

The Florida native, whose first trial ended with a deadlocked jury, is set to be tried again in September 2025.

Dreaming Of You – Selena The tragic facts of Selena's murder make her massive posthumous success all the more gut-wrenching.

A nine-time winner of the Tejano Music Award for Female Vocalist of the Year, Selena Quintanilla

Perez elevated the genre to new heights and redefined women's roles in Tejano music.

On March 31st, 1995, Selena was shot and killed by Yolanda Saldívar, the president of her fan club, with whom the singer's relationship had become strained.

Aged only 23 at the time, and seen as not yet having reached her peak, the smash success of the melancholy Dreaming Of You hurts even more because its performer didn't live to see it.

Whatever – Our Lady Peace Unlike most of the songs and artists on our list, the creepiness of this hard-charging post-grunge tune has nothing to do with any of the band's members, or with the band itself at all.

Rather, the reason that Our Lady Peace stopped performing Whatever live for 20 years is because of the late Chris Benoit.

For the uninitiated, Benoit was a Canadian WWE superstar, winning 30 championships in total.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't be his legacy.

From June 22nd to June 24th, 2007, Benoit took the lives of his wife and 7-year-old son before ultimately taking his own.

Whatever was Benoit's entrance theme from 2002 to 2007.

Morphine – Michael Jackson While king of pop Michael Jackson had experimented with heavier styles of music before, Morphine stands out as a groovy, distorted, almost industrial jam that almost recalls Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails.

In line with Jackson's songwriting during the 90s, Morphine is a scathing indictment of media scrutiny regarding his well-documented personal life, acting as an impassioned plea for privacy on the singer's parts.

While already a difficult listen at the time of its release, it took on an even darker layer following Jackson's 2009 death, the result of acute propofol intoxication.

This was later ruled as involuntary manslaughter on the part of Conrad Murray, his personal physician.

Let's Go Crazy – Prince Yeah, there's a chance you've heard this one before.

The enormously influential Purple One was an undisputed god of pop and rock songcraft, and his signature 1984 album Purple Rain is living proof of that.

Let's Go Crazy is a wild ride through multiple music genres and, following Prince's 2016 death, a disturbing, unintentional allusion to just how he would meet his end.

The song, an unabashed celebration of life, refers to not letting the elevator bring you down.

Chillingly, Prince was found unresponsive in an elevator of his Paisley Park home on

Age Ain't Nothin' But A Number – Aaliyah We have just two words that will answer any questions you might have.

Teenage R&B slash pop prodigy Aaliyah was taken on by the Pied Piper himself in a mentor-mentee relationship that very quickly deteriorated into something much more sinister.

The two secretly wed while working on Aaliyah's debut album, which shares its title with this song, in 1994.

The marriage was annulled the following year by her parents due to her age at the time.

Knowing that leads modern-day listeners to hear Age Ain't Nothin' But A Number in a different, wildly off-putting light.

Bump N' Grind – R. Kelly Any song that begins with those lyrics would be considered to have aged like milk.

However, when you take into account singer Kelly's literal decades of misconduct allegations, the lyrics to Bump N' Grind take on an entirely new context that would churn the stomach of even the most hardened listener.

Originally acquitted in 2008 of misconduct charges involving minors, Kelly was sentenced to 31 years in prison following convictions in 2021 and 23.

Kelly's self-admitted inability to control his inhibitions on Bump N' Grind now leaves listeners hitting skip.

After the premiere of Surviving R. Kelly in 2019, Lady Gaga scrubbed a version of her 2013 hit, Do What You Want, that featured Kelly from streaming services.

I Took A Pill In Ibiza – Mike Posner Posner's tropical dance floor anthem is already a deceptively dark song.

Posner's shockingly blunt lyrics find the Cooler Than Me singer lamenting on the hollow nature of fame and the stark realisation that money and material possessions won't make you happy.

The song's chorus, however, is where things really start to become eerie.

That name drops the late producer Avicii, and according to Posner, refers to a real-life incident in which he follows the Swedish DJ to the titular island and succumbed to peer pressure.

Tragically, Avicii, born Tim Bergling, took his own life in 2018, reportedly following years-long struggles with addiction.

Knowing that turns a cautionary tale into an uneasy, unintentional tribute.

2009 – Mac Miller Hip-hop bands were hit hard in September 2018 when Pittsburgh native Miller, born Malcolm McCormick, passed away from a drug overdose.

Those same bands were also quick to point out that Miller had never shied away from addressing themes of addiction and depression in his music.

In particular, they looked to 2009, the penultimate song on his 2018 album, Swimming, Miller's last before 2020's posthumous Circles.

The song alludes to Miller's difficulty with his rapid rise to fame.

The title is a reference to the release year of his first mixtapes.

Over a gentle, twinkling beat, Miller raps things about using to ease his pain, and most heartbreakingly of all, argues that an angel's supposed to fly.

I Need A Girl Part 2 – P Diddy Not unlike Bump N Grind, the lyrics to the sequel to I Need A Girl Part 1 probably elicited cringe from listeners at the time.

Written and co-produced by Sean P. Diddy Combs himself, the song raises eyebrows more than once.

In fact, the original song finds Diddy comparing the love of his life to… a brother?

And for that matter, why are these brothers doing that?

The chorus will definitely make you wince too.

While I Need A Girl, the second, was already uncomfortable enough, that feeling doubled after Combs was hit with multiple misconduct and assault lawsuits at the end of 2023.

That'll Be The Day – Buddy Holly February 3rd, 1959 is known as the day the music died for a reason.

That was the day the three rock and roll legends met a tragic and storied end when their plane crashed in Iowa.

They were Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the big bopper J.P. Richardson.

The man born Charles Hardin Holly had only relatively recently made his major label breakthrough album That'll Be The Day.

That album's title track was a massive hit within the final year of Holly's life.

Its chorus, detailing Holly's confidence that his relationship will never end, became tragically ironic following that plane crash, when in reality his wife, Maria Elena, was widowed.