And I Must Scream/Music

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • "Hyperspace Cryogenic Insomnia Blues" by Tom Smith in which the singer is awake during his cryogenic sleep. The "We're two weeks out of Terran orbit Ten years left to go..." line left me shuddering.
  • "One" by Metallica, inspired by Johnny Got His Gun, focuses on a soldier who has his eyes, ears, mouth, arms, and legs destroyed (by a WW 1 German artillery shell in Johnny and a Vietnamese landmine in "One"), but is still conscious. Though he eventually manages to communicate with the doctors and military men keeping him alive, they refuse to disconnect his life support, and he presumably must exist in that condition (unable to communicate with anyone, see or hear anything, go anywhere, ect...) for the rest of his natural life. Now there's an unsettling thought. The song itself tells the story rather well, especially with the lines "Darkness - Imprisoning me, all that I see, absolute horror, I can not live, I can not die, trapped in myself, body my holding cell. Landmine - Has taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing, taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my soul, left me with life in Hell!"
  • The song "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath is about a man from a post-apocalyptic world where everything was devastated by a man made of metal. He travels back in time to warn the people of the past, but something goes wrong during the time travel process and "he was turned to steel." He is aware of his surroundings, but unable to move or speak, and he is completely ignored by everyone who sees him. He is driven insane and when he finally regains mobility, he goes on a rampage and devastates everything.
  • Iron Savior's song "Watcher in the Sky" is from the point of view of the living brain of Iron Savior as the spaceship travels endlessly, out of his control and increasingly unresponsive.
  • Queensryche's "Screaming In Digital" perfectly inverts the Trope Namer, taking the POV of a sentient AI which, though granted consciousness by its domineering maker ('father'), is callously denied the option to exercise free will or communicate with anyone else.
  • The video to Radiohead's "There There" has Thom Yorke turned into a tree. A tree with his screaming face still visible.
  • "Brain Dead" by Judas Priest is about a man suffering from locked-in syndrome who desperately wants to die.
  • Florence and The Machine used this is in the Bird Song.
  • "Blow Up the Outside World" by Soundgarden. The speaker is essentially singing about how much his life sucks, yet no matter how hard he tries, he either cannot bring himself to suicide, or simply fails at it again and again.
  • The second-to-last verse of Current 93's epic I Have A Special Plan For This World:

There are some who have no voices
 Or none that will ever speak
Because of the things they know about this world
And the things they feel about this world
Because the thoughts that fill a brain
That is a damaged brain
Because the pain that fills a body
That is a damaged body
Exists in other worlds
Countless other worlds
Each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness
For which no words are being conceived
And where no voices are able to speak
When a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts
When a damaged body is filled only with pain
And stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness
And exists in a world for which there is no special plan.

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