DUDE HOLY FUCK this is really fucking funny because AT THIS MOMENT I'm listening to Bill Hick's rant on this exact Judas Priest issue. Wow, I have nothing to add, but wow crazy shit.

I suppose if the person was already depressed or susceptible to such emotionally charged music, it could have some effect. Maybe not drive them all the way there, or specifically convince them to do so, but songs can be powerful to people. There's that song "Gloomy Sunday," of course, but most of the suicides are unconfirmed.
It's also a sad case when people follow there idols--I believe there were a few suicides following Kurt Cobain's.

Eh, it seems like kind of a cop-out to blame stuff like 'the glamorisation of death' on music... I mean, that whole attitude of glorifying death and suicide has been around for centuries, and pops up everywhere from the tales of soldiers making desperate last stands (Thermopoli, Rourke's Drift and Little Bighorn, to name just three) to children's tales (check out http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/42/1/49 for a particularly creepy Victorian example). It would be a lot more productive to look at what causes that glamorisation in the first place, and also have a look at the problems with society that cause them, like the way status and success is prized above personal happiness and the stress caused by people trying to meet unrealistic expectations of stuf like body image and earning potential.
So yeah, I think music that glamorises suicide is just a byproduct of much larger problems, and I think it's dumb to just blame the music when it would probably just be a minor contributing factor at most. I'm not sure if it can be completely disregarded, since music can obviously have a powerful emotional impact on people, but it's still kinda silly to just go "hey, let's ignore any other factors that might have contributed to this death, MUSIC KILLED THIS GIRL".

Kinda like how they blamed Rammstein and Marylin Manson for Columbine.  I guess in a way it can have an effect but just the music itself isn't the reason.

I think that being unhappy can sometimes be one of the things that makes a person want to listen to "unhappy" music (note: not the ONLY thing that will do it, I listen to tons of unhappy music all the time and i am the happiest guy ever) and that in turn makes their unhappiness worse.  But it is getting worse because they are wallowing not because the music is filling them with demons.

the music is filling me with demons.

So basically I agree with everybody else on gw BIG SURPRISE!

Well I think part of it is like well I think like YESTERDAY is a really sad song but Marilyn Manson is really depressing and imo it's kind of the difference between sad music that makes you want to cry and angry music that doesn't really solve anything

I'm not sure which you mean by UNHAPPY music though because both are emotions other than happy

No, I don't think so, I think they would do it anyway. Well maybe it can act as some sort of trigger but only because they were in the mood in first place. The idea that satanic subliminal messages in music can control people like that sounds like an evil villain's plan to destroy the universe in a really bad film.

I think that music doesn't make someone suicidal/evil/satanic etc, it's just that someone with those tendencies will listen to music that has them. It won't be the element that pushes them to the edge, a song won't make you commit suicide. Most people would also agree that you don't listen to sad music to make yourself sad etc. It's often empowering, you find hope within it and see that you're not alone. Aaron from My Dying Bride even said that even though his lyrics are often very bleak and negative, everything has some hope in it.

I find it interesting that in all these cases, all the artists that were blamed were popular. I've seen songs that are much worse than anything Manson, Priest and Rammstein have done put together. A great example would be suicidal black metal (let's not have a debate about how stupid the ideology behind the music is etc... maybe in another topic?). These bands openly encourage suicide through their imagery, their music and their lyrics yet I've never heard of someone killing themselves to this music. You could say the same thing about many doom metal bands too.

Anyways, I don't think music is what will make someone kill themselves.

argh, stupid patethic people deserve to kill themselves.

basically if music makes them kill themselves, it could be a possible contributor, but it is not the music that makes these faggots pathetic in the first place.

that's pretty offensive

people need to have something very wrong with them mentally if they're going to kill themselves, if you're in that situation it's not really something you can help regardless of how much of a COOL GUY you are

even beyond that, there's a lot of chemical shit in your brain that you have no control over that can lead someone to kill themselves. it's not something you have to worry about normally, but trauma and various diseases can change the entire way your mind works and it's really dumb to call the people subject to this stuff PATHETIC

lets just try and defend Shep and say maybe he meant only the people who genuinely have one reason (emocut) and do it over music.

and even then no such Scotsmen exists so yes troll post