Halloween is one of the most fun holidays for oh so many reasons, but one of my absolute favorite reasons is the music! Christmas has a whole lot of wonderful songs written specifically for it and it's easy to saturate yourself in it, but Halloween runs a close second with the plethora of songs it has going for it. What makes Halloween even more fun, though, is that not all Halloween music is about Halloween itself, in fact most of it isn't. Sure, there's a fair share of Halloween tracks that are campy, cheesy fun about the holiday itself, but the majority of songs associated with Halloween are simply about spooky things. Whether it's werewolves, ghosts, ghouls, and monsters of all kind, or it's things in the dark, a general creepy vibe, or gruesome murderous events, there is so much music out there depicting things that for sure belong in anything Halloween-related. Hunting it all down is nearly impossible, but collecting a decent list of new things every year is one of my favorite ways to get into the Halloween spirit. It's easy to throw Rocky Horror, Thriller, Monster Mash, and some other favorites on a playlist, but that's cliche. So here's a list of 8 essential tracks for your future Halloween playlist, but not the 8 you might be expecting.
1. Black No.1 (Little Miss Scare-All) by Type O Negative
What's more Halloween-y than a goth metal group writing a song about a goth girl, full of references to various famous monsters and samples from famous horror themes? I say nothing. The song depicts a woman who is obsessed with the dark and occult, who needs to re-dye her hair black before she can go out in the spooky night. With such iconic lines as "Loving you was like loving the dead" and the verse "She's got a date at midnight/With Nosferatu/Baby, Lilly Munster/Got Nothing on you/When I called her evil/She just laughed/and cast that spell on me/Boo Bitch-craft", this song satisfies all the gothic, spooky, Halloween-y cravings one could have and then more. Plus, the original version is 11 minutes long, so it really gets its creepy theme across and sets the atmosphere. A perfect song to start out any spooky playlist.
2. A Little Piece Of Heaven by Avenged Sevenfold
An absurdly catchy song, accompanied by this gloriously gruesome and hilarious but NSFW music video, A Little Piece of Heaven tells the story of a man who murders his girlfriend and then uses her body, followed by her coming back as a zombie (but with much more ghoul-like features if we're being honest and picky) and doing the same to him. But the plot thickens from there, because his body also gets reanimated, and the two of them fight before teaming up to murder the entire town before inviting all of their zombie selves to the couple's wedding. It's a wonderfully cheesy, gruesome, and catchy song for the season, and it again fits all the criteria one would want for a playlist of the same theme.
3. Nightmare on My Street by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
A throwback for sure, all the way to when Will Smith was still just a rapper, known as The Fresh Prince. This is one of my all-time favorite Halloween tracks, it combines clever quips, punchlines, and cheesy lines with an equal amount of back-and-forth and genuine fright. It's one of the most well-done Halloween-themed tracks of all time, regardless of genre. It tells the story of Freddy Krueger coming to haunt The Fresh Prince's street and trying to recruit him to help get Freddy a girl at a Halloween party, before moving on and haunting DJ Jazzy Jeff after The Fresh Prince finds out what's going on. Give this track a listen or three and see why it's on this list of essential Halloween tracks.
4. Dead Man's Party by Oingo Boingo
One of the greatest bands to ever exist, formed by none other than Danny Elfman himself (known for his soundtracks for such famous films as A Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and many, many more) and based off an absurd theatrical group put together by his brother, Oingo Boingo was a new-wave and ska band that absolutely dominated the eighties. Known for being featured at least once in almost every classic eighties movie, and even lending their song Weird Science to the movie of the same name, Oingo Boingo is one of the most famous bands that many people don't know. Off the album of the same name, Dead Man's Party is a fun, theatrical track about dying and being invited to "a party where no one's alive". The most fun and dance-able track about death you're likely to find, this amazing song by an equally amazing band will never fail to liven up any Halloween party as soon as you put it on.
5. Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus
Okay, this one might be brushing the cliche, because it's (thank goodness) a very well-known song by title, if not by exposure as well. A song dedicated to the famous actor from Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (the 1931 movie directed by Bram Stoker, not to be confused with the 1992 movie "Bram Stoker's Dracula" directed by Francis Ford Coppola), Bela Lugosi's Dead was one of the first "mainstream" goth rock songs, and for good reason. If any song were to put the genre into the public's eye, one about Bela Lugosi being "dead, dead, dead undead" is certainly a great one to do so. A catchy, eerie, and again lengthy track, it continues the trend of wonderful songs that are a must-have on any Halloween playlist.
6. Heads Will Roll by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
This song is probably on some of your other playlists, but it definitely fits on a Halloween one just as well. One of the most fun songs of all time, with the iconic "Off with your head, dance til you're dead" intro line, it's hard to overlook this song's potential to be a Halloween party anthem, and yet they do time and time again. So I'm here to tell you to give Yeah Yeah Yeahs the fame they deserve by throwing this song one even MORE playlists, making them spooky playlists this time. This song won't fail to get your party going, I promise.
7. Vampires Will Never Hurt You by My Chemical Romance
Don't worry emo kids, I've not forgotten you, because I am for sure one of you, and this one's for you. One of the earliest My Chem songs, Vampires Will Never Hurt You is self-explanatory in its relevance to Halloween. A song about a man begging his lover to kill him before the sun goes down and he becomes a bloodthirsty vampire after being bitten, this is a wonderful soundscape to hype up any party in its heaviness, emo and punk elements, and overall very vampiric lines. Plus, with a line like "We'll shoot back holy water like cheap whiskey" and alternating soft and heavy sections, how could this song not do a good job of setting the party mood? For other My Chemical Romance Halloween essentials see most of The Black Parade album and the song Early Sunsets Over Monroeville, a ballad which was written about the original 1978 version of Dawn of the Dead, one of the most heartbreaking horror movies of all time and frontman Gerard Way's favorite horror movie.
8. Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones
What better way to finish off a list of must-have Halloween tracks than by tacking on this iconic song. Not necessarily limited to Halloween in any way, Sympathy for the Devil is a timeless track by The Rolling Stones about and from the perspective of the devil himself, detailing his presence at many historical moments. It's a catchy track, it's full of history, it's full of references to the occult, and it's about the devil. That, plus one of Mick Jagger's most melodramatic vocal deliveries ever, makes this song perfect to throw into every Halloween playlist you may be ready to get locked and loaded for your spooky parties over the next couple weeks.
While these eight tracks may be an absolute tour de force to make your party tunes stand out from everyone else's cliche, campy, overdone playlists, that doesn't mean you should be discouraged from adding those same cliche, campy, overdone tracks to your playlist along with these songs. Monster Mash wouldn't be such a timeless bop if it wasn't so good, so don't worry if it plays a few times over the course of the night while you're shuffling through some other, more niche selections you may have picked. For a nice jumble of all sorts of Halloween songs from all sorts of sonic directions, check out this Spotify playlist I made to get myself and my friends into the mood as well, maybe it'll help you further formulate yours!
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