Downer Ending/Music: Difference between revisions

* [[Dream Theater|"Open your eyes Nicholas." "AHH-" * static* ]]

* [[Led Zeppelin]]'s "Gallow's Pole." As much as the man tries to bribe the executioner with letting him live--giving him riches and letting him have sex with his sister--he still swings.

* A particularly notorious example was [[Michael Jackson]]'s music video/short film "Black or White", based on the hit single of the same name. It was shown on three basic cable channels simultaneously one night in the fall of 1991, so it was guaranteed to garner a huge audience with [[Hilarious in Hindsight|many children watching]]. The video, which included (among other things) African tribesmen, fur-capped Russian dancers, the Statue of Liberty, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|Macaulay Culkin performing a rap]], seemingly concluded with a young black woman (who, in montage, had just been transformed into a variety of different people of various skin colors and body types, as well as of both sexes) miming to the end of the song. But then the camera cuts away to reveal that the girl is actually an actress in the studio where the video is being filmed, and pans away until it is following a black leopard as it stalks its way out of the studio and into the dark and rainy night. Once outside, the leopard transforms into Michael Jackson and begins to compulsively perform a dance that becomes more and more unnerving as it goes along, with a great deal of crotch-grabbing. Suddenly he begins smashing a car, shop windows, etc., screaming all the while. As this orgy of godlike destruction concludes, Michael's screams are mixed with the roars of his leopard alter ego. He finally rips off half his clothes and collapses into the rain-slicked street, whereupon he transforms back into the leopard, snarls, and stalks away. And ''then'' in a particularly egregious case of [[Mood Whiplash]], the scene cuts to an animated living room, where it is revealed that [[The Simpsons|Bart Simpson]] has been watching the entire time. His father bursts in and orders Bart to turn off the TV, prompting Bart to retort with one of his trademark wisecracks. Needless to say, this video left many in its television audience confused, traumatized, and angered. Jackson was forced to issue a public apology for the incident and the video was recut so that it ended just before the "black leopard" sequence. Later, the full-length version reappeared with CGI effects superimposing racist graffiti on the objects he smashed to provide justification for his rage.

* Finnis Schlager example: ''Yksinäinen'' ("Lonely"). The song name in itself is somewhat of a [[Spoiler Title]], but the listener might still be unpleasantly surprised. The song is about someone who leaves their home village to try their luck in the world and find happiness. After a few verses of the world generally pissing in in their face, they return home, realising the only true happiness for them is their true love who they left behind years ago. They finally arrive -- and cannot find their love -- only a grave.