10 spooky singles for your Halloween playlist
Picture: Sebastian Ervi/Pexels
It’s one thing to look side-eyed at the kids dancing for TikTok, quite another to forget that dance crazes date back to the primordial soup of rock ‘n’ roll.
One of the longest-enduring and most-beloved products of an entire cottage industry of novelty music to emerge from 20th-century Americana, singer Bobby Pickett’s came about as a happy accident, after an off-the-cuff monologue imitating horror icon Boris Karloff was a hit with live audiences.
As recently pointed out on social media, it’s also a very early example of meta-commentary in pop songwriting. Are you listening to the Monster Mash presently, or is he singing about another song and dance entirely?
The debut single from US proto-punk pioneers The Sonics is laden with low-brow, pulp-horror imagery, but don’t mistake for anything near a seasonal novelty.
This is pure, primeval, proto-punk rock ‘n’ roll, with no pretences or airs: stabbing, mangled chords reinforce a sense of dread, locking in with bass that’s overamplified to distortion.
It’s not hard to imagine vocalist and songwriter Gerry Roslie being possessed himself, a frankly alarming studio performance elevates the affair to cult-classic status, with a bug-eyed, full-throated howl.
Instantly recognisable as the theme song from envelope-pushing possession horror film , this tune itself sits as the first movement in a full-blown instrumental masterwork by the same name, composed and performed in its entirety by 19-year-old Mike Oldfield.
While speciality radio had taken to Oldfield’s debut excursion on Virgin Records, including BBC radio’s John Peel, it was two passing appearances in the timeless tale of possession that would place in the all-time Halloween pantheon.
It’s a gateway to a sprawling and ambitious body of work that helped make contemporary classical composition accessible to a generation already primed for such sounds amid the rise of progressive rock.
While US horror-punk icons The Misfits never shied away from the morose or the macabre, their gargantuan original vocalist Glenn Danzig’s slick, leather-lunged croon was never better than on this slice of ghoulish fun, given a belated release in 1996 after being recorded for the band’s proposed debut album.
A mover of a tune that transcends their B-movie aesthetic and played-out merchandise empire, there’s enough morbid joy in these two minutes to put a grin on the face of any creature of the night.
So overplayed in certain circles is one of the UK metal veterans' breakthrough hits that it's easy to forget the pop-cultural and literary inspirations behind it: was written by Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris after a nightmare prompted by watching Damien: Omen II, with lyrical nods to Scottish poet Robert Frost's .
Cultural layers aside, it's peak Maiden at the height of their powers: soaring, thundering heavy metal that helped take the genre into the mainstream, guaranteeing them three decades and counting of stadium-filling longevity.Â
By the onset of the eighties, punk's aesthetic assault had morphed into various progressions, with post-punk and new-wave helping carry the genre's influences, articulation and catharsis forward. But even against the cast of characters that inhabited the darker, more sensitive parts of post-punk, Siouxsie and the Banshees, fronted by the iconic Siouxsie Sioux stood out.
Taken from fourth LP 'Juju', 'Halloween' is a slice of noirish, stripped-back rock 'n' roll, pockmarked by near-dischordant, droning guitar and Siouxsie's no-frills vocal delivery.
Guaranteed to be a staple of any Halloween playlist, occupies a unique place in Western pop-culture: the theme to an enduring ‘spooky’ media franchise that somehow manages to be just about family-friendly across a series of films, television shows and videogames.
It was also a testament to the hitmaking abilities of singer and songwriter Ray Parker Jr, a long-time session musician on the US major-label scene and co-writer of soul classics like ‘You Got the Love’.
Or it would have been, were it not for a plagiarism lawsuit filed by fellow '80s icon, Huey Lewis: the similarities between and Lewis warranted a 1995 settlement after years of legal wrangling.
There are few bands in the world that have grasped the nettles of unsettling subject matter better or with more zeal than Northern Irish outfit Therapy? Over the years, they’ve tackled the actions and legacies of figures like Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer with a demented grin.
No better an example of said rictus exists, however, than toward the end of unfairly-maligned 2001 effort - from beginning to end, is a veritable pile of riffs, and while it’s a love letter to cheesy horror-film tropes, a break in the action for some humour emerges when singer Andy Cairns takes on a stern, cautionary-tale narrative tone: ‘No more drugs for this young man!’Â
A not-so-quiet highlight on an album that saw Therapy? take a turn for garage-rock excess after a fraught creative and business period, under the watchful eye of grunge legend Jack Endino.
An enduring and beloved part of Cork’s current music scene, The Altered Hours are held in such esteem for a reason - five best friends sharing influences, sounds and feelings across a body of work that’s lurched around the spectra of post-punk, shoegaze and psychedelia.
While not necessarily steeped in seasonal spookiness so much as existential weariness, is a natural fit for the seasonal playlist by dint of an otherworldly feel around its wailing lead guitar line and earth-bound lyrical imagery.Â
It helps of course, that it’s the kind of tops-off, shirt-swinging banger that’ll fare well toward the end of your grown-ups-only soirée/séance.
A solo songwriter releasing via renowned US label Sargent House, Chelsea Wolfe’s body of work is distinctly dark, running the gamut from sludgy, doomy heaviness to a lighter touch that resonates with well-worn American folk imagery.
Most recent long-player leans in the latter direction, but wears its weariness on its sleeve: the album’s title track is menacing, straining against its own stripped-back nature in places.
Built on a simple guitar progression, gentle ambient electronics and a dense vocal melody, it’s the perfect introduction to Wolfe’s discography for listeners in need of a new way to plunge their personal depths.
