Here are a few facts you might not know about suicide, songs and musicians.
Wikipedia informs me that there are known to be close to 250 songs containing references to suicide in one form or another. (Who keeps those stats?!)
And our friend (never make him an enemy) Mr A.I., tells me there are 647 songs referencing suicide in the English language; that such songs are common in US culture (where else?) and appear in every genre from country to hip hop, punk and rock, to blues.
More interestingly, analysis has found that musicians illustrated have five main themes:
- Support and empathy for people struggling
- Personal experience with suicidal thoughts
- Endorsement of suicide
- Suicide as rebellion or revenge
- Self-medication
(I’ll wager that is the first time you have seen bullet points in a music review!)
Sweden’s Robert Pettersson seems, although I’m sorry to say it, to reside in the second, third and fourth categories.
Robert struggles with bipolar disorder and describes his song ‘You’ as “the most important thing I’ve done for my self-esteem.” He also reveals that it is “the first time I’ve written a song in a fit of death longing.”
He does have something of the look of The Cure’s Robert Smith about him so some eccentricity is to be expected but we must acknowledge a serious subject with the gravitas it merits.
He describes ‘You’ as more than just music; rather it’s a document of a survival process that takes the manic depressive deeper into the darkness than he has ever done before.
He makes the illuminating observation that “thinking about death as often as I do is quite energy-consuming and tiring, but also a vent for feeling calm.”
‘You’ was written during a fantasy and a longing for “the other side.” He reveals that he has tried to take his life before and has to live with that shame, but “I’ll never try again.”
At least he won’t as long as he has his “fantasy” during his depressions, which help him to get back on track although he doesn’t reveal or hint at what that fantasy is.
He says openly, and I applaud him for this (quote) “I’m so happy and proud that I actually managed to create a work under disgusting circumstances and feeling bad. It’s one of the most important things I’ve done for my self-esteem and I’ve learned something important, that in my weakest moments I can actually be my strongest. It’s nice and I really just want to accept who I am and continue living.”
Q.E.D.
He also reveals something that was puzzling me – who is the ‘You’ to whom he refers? Someone with suicidal tendencies would surely write about ‘Me’. Was he pushed into this state by the ending of a relationship?
“You’ve taken the love from me/it’s nowhere to be found”. “The last song will be about you”.
But of course it is his alter ago, the other personality, the one that pushes him in that terminal direction. Thus the song is about “large parts of my life that I both love and hate” and yes he would be glad to see the back of ‘You’, the hateful bit.
Musically it’s a commanding performance, the sort of score you’d expect to play out a film in which the main character has overcome overwhelming odds to survive and fight another day (I’ll throw in a random example, Sandra Bullock in Gravity, crawling up that beach in her wet T-shirt and pants having beaten everything the cosmos could throw at her), bringing the audience to a standing ovation, or tears, or both.
The slight problem I have is that the musical majesty and positivity doesn’t match the lyrics, which remain depressingly negative to the end without any semblance of hope. It isn’t a song you could play to a gathering of suicide survivors even if there are other occasions in which I can easily imagine both music and lyrics appearing in a film or TV drama.
The video, produced by Chris Rehn, who also co-wrote and produced the song, is well constructed, following the evolving path of ‘me’ and ‘you’ through images that switch between happy countryside scenes with rolling clouds enveloping rolling hills, to a dank cellar that is clearly the home of a hopeless alcoholic and contributes an excellent visual dimension.
‘You’ is released via Playground Music and is available on all digital platforms.
The album ‘Deabolo Hypomania’ will be released on April 10th, 2026.
Find him on:
Website: https://www.robertpettersson.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576198115546&utm
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robertpetterssonofficial
