We all know about music’s power to change a life, but can it literally save one, to make the difference between life and death?

According to a Nashville FOX 17 report, that’s exactly what Johnny Cash’s grandson, Thomas Gabriel, says music was for him — a determining factor in keeping him alive. After spending eight years in prison, living on the streets, going through a revolving door of rehabs, and almost taking his own life, Thomas made playing and performing music, like his famous grandfather who had warned him of the perils of substance abuse, a central purpose, a decision that helped him sober up and made him want to keep living.

On NYC’s Breakfast Club radio show, Saturday Night Live’s Peter Davidson credited Kid Cuda’s 2009 debut album Man on the Moon for pulling him back from the brink: “I would’ve killed myself. Absolutely, 100 percent. I truly believe if Man on the Moon didn’t come out, I wouldn’t be here,” he said.

In his memoir, Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide, Run-DMC’s Darryl “DMC” McDaniels talks about how in 1997 during a two-week tour in Japan he was determined to end it all, were it not for the power of Sarah McLachlan’s song ‘Angel’ to keep him grounded.

“I was probably at my suicidal worst,” Darryl wrote. “Whatever my hesitations about suicide, I sometimes think I would have done the deed easily if it weren’t for that record. I thought long and hard about killing myself every day in Japan.”

He adds: “I considered jumping out of a window. I thought about going to a hardware store to buy poison to ingest. I thought about putting a gun to my temple. Whenever I’d listen to ‘Angel,’ though, I always managed to make my way back from the brink.”

“I truly believe if Man on the Moon didn’t come out, I wouldn’t be here”