face the music

To experience negative repercussions for one's actions or words, especially those that one would expect to incur punishment. I told you not to try to sneak in, and now that you've been caught, you're just going to have to face the music. If we do nothing to curb this pollution, I guarantee we will face the music in the future.

Fig. to receive punishment; to accept the unpleasant results of one's actions. Mary broke a dining-room window and had to face the music when her father got home. After failing a math test, Tom had to go home and face the music.

Confront unpleasantness, especially the consequences of one's errors. For example, When the check bounced, he had to face the music. The precise allusion in this expression has been lost. Most authorities believe it refers to a theater's pit orchestra, which an actor must face when he faces what can be a hostile audience, but some hold it comes from the military, where a formal dismissal in disgrace would be accompanied by band music. [Second half of 1800s] Also see face up to.

COMMON If you face the music, you accept responsibility for something that you have done wrong and you prepare yourself to be criticized or punished for it. We were foreigners in a forbidden area, the authorities had found out and we were about to face the music. Sooner or later, she'll have to face the music and it won't be pleasant. Note: The `music' in this expression may refer to the orchestra at an opera or musical. The orchestra sits in front of the stage, so when a performer faces the audience, they also face the orchestra, or `music'. Alternatively, the expression may come from an army practice in which a soldier who had been dismissed for dishonourable behaviour was sent away with drums beating.

To accept the unpleasant consequences, especially of one's own actions.

To meet the consequences of one’s bad behavior, mistakes, and the like; to confront difficulties bravely. This term, American in origin, is believed to come from the theater and refers to the orchestra in the pit, which an actor must face along with a perhaps hostile audience. Another writer suggests it comes from the armed services, where a soldier’s dismissal in disgrace might be accompanied by the band’s playing the “Rogue’s March.” An 1871 book of American sayings quotes James Fenimore Cooper discussing, about 1851, Rabelais’s “unpleasant quarter [of an hour],” when the French writer found he could not pay his bill and turned on the innkeeper with an accusation of treason, which so frightened him that he let Rabelais leave without paying. Cooper said that “our more picturesque people” called this facing the music. A less picturesque synonym is to face up to something.