Halloween Songs

Who's the Mariah Carey of Halloween? Every year we hear many familiar Halloween songs – from the Ghostbusters theme to “Thriller” to “Monster Mash.” But beyond those Halloween staples, what’s next? Today we've got an episode of NPR’s All Songs Considered that offers up a new canon spooky season songs – from the truly terrifying to autumnal and nostalgic. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Stephen Thompson?

  Halloween is almost here, and you've maybe started hearing those familiar Halloween songs that resurface every year. Your Ghostbusters theme, your thriller, your Monster Mash. But beyond those Halloween staples, what's next? I'm Stephen Thompson, and I recently joined my pals on NPR's All Songs Considered to come up with a new canon of songs for spooky season. Here's host, Robyn Hilton.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  It's All Songs Considered. I'm Robyn Hilton. I'm here with NPR Music Editor Hazel Sills and our correspondent for all things A Mile Wide and An Inch Deep, Stephen Thompson.

• 0:58Stephen Thompson?

  NPR dilettante correspondent.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  Host of New Music Friday, also with Pop Culture Happy Hour. Stephen, the idea for this year's Halloween episode is yours, so maybe you should set this whole thing up for us.

• 1:13Stephen Thompson?

  Well, it's interesting. One of my beats at NPR is the Billboard charts. If you look at the Billboard charts in late October into early November, you'll see, like, all of a sudden, Ray Parker Jr.'s greatest hits hits the album chart. Michael Jackson's greatest hits or the album thriller really pop up. There's sort of a number of Halloween staples that have started to form a Halloween music canon beyond the song "Monster Mash" by Bobby Boris Pickett. And what I pitched to Robyn and what I wanted to discuss with you all is, let's agree on a more expansive Halloween music canon.

• 1:55Stephen Thompson?

  What songs do we want to see pop up around spooky season? That are true to the season, but also are not just novelty songs, are not just like, gather around my boys and ghouls, you know, but like actually spooky songs that are, that rule.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  So we've got a number of categories we're going to do to sort of winnow down what kind of songs belong in the Halloween canon. I thought we would start with songs that are truly terrifying, not the goofball songs.

• 2:28Stephen Thompson?

  Right. All right. Well, I'll kick us off. Not a terribly old song, but this song is genuinely spooky. It's also beautiful. It's also just by one of, you know, my favorite singers to pop up in the last decade or so. It's the song Killer by Phoebe Bridgers.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  Sometimes I think I'm a killer. I scared you in your house. I even scared myself by talking about Dahmer on your couch.

• 3:00Stephen Thompson?

  I think part of what's creepy about it, first of all, it is a, it is a gloomy song. It is, it is a song that feels autumnal. I think a lot of the horror and kind of the horror icons that speak most to me have a certain level of like, of humanity to them. This song felt true to that. It felt like, it has this intimacy, but it's like a whisper about murder.

• 3:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a spooky kind of, almost like normalcy to this song, like what she's expressing about, do I have the capacity to do the kinds of things that I'm singing about?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Sometimes the most terrifying thing in the world is your own thoughts.

• 3:40Stephen Thompson?

  I mean.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Right?

• 3:41Stephen Thompson?

  And who are you talking to, Robin?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  But she, and, and I think specifically the fear of not being in control of your own thoughts and actions. And that's something that she alludes to in the song. So Killer from Phoebe Bridgers, that's from Stranger in the Alps. It came out in 2017. We're going to add that one to the canon. Hazel, what do you want to add? And this is for the category, Songs That Are Truly Terrifying.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  A song that I thought of when you mentioned this category is the song If I Had A Heart by the artist Phoebe Ray.

• 4:36Stephen Thompson?

  That is such a good pick.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:38Stephen Thompson?

  It is so unsettling.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Everything Fever Ray.

• 4:40Stephen Thompson?

  I'm just sitting there, the whole time I was, the whole time I was listening to it, I was like, who are you gonna call?

• 4:46Speaker 04

  It's creepy. It's just like, you know, costumes and spooky images and ghosts and monsters are just such a big part of the Fever Ray project. And I think aside from the instrumentals of this music, the way it's so foreboding and it, it almost feels like, like a Western score. It's like, I feel like I'm walking down a dark road. The lyrics are so terrifyingly opaque. It's like, if I had a heart, I could love you. And you know, it's this kind of almost like creature is singing about how much they want more and more. And it's like, well, more of what?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  I mean, everything Fever Ray does is terrifying to me. The videos, videos too, when you say some sort of creature, that's the spirit and even the, the physical form that they inhabit in their videos, right? They're always monstrous.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 5:36Stephen Thompson?

  That is such a good entry in the Halloween canon. That's exactly what I'm talking about. I want to see Fever Ray pop up on the Billboard charts every October.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Well, I think the thing that's interesting about the Billboard charts and this whole thing becoming a thing right now is that the cynical side of me immediately thought of how labels just want to capitalize on this, this thing that they're seeing. They, they start to see like, well, wait a minute, if, if Thriller's popping up on the charts this time of year, maybe we really need to be releasing more Halloween themed music, just so we can really capitalize on this. And then I've already taken it as far as, well, Fever Ray will never get the attention that Fever Ray deserves because the oxygen's going to be sucked up by all the pop stars and the big, big labels and everything trying to capitalize on this market.

• 6:30Stephen Thompson?

  Halloween's gotten too commercial, man.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  It's just too commercial.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  There's too many spirit Halloweens.

• 6:36Stephen Thompson?

  It used to be about the fear, man.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  All right, we're doing these categories. The next category is.

• 6:45Stephen Thompson?

  Ghosts from your church.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Childhood. No, nostalgia. Let's just, let's just take a nostalgia trip here and talk about the songs, regardless of whether or not they're scary, that really take us back to the magical time of our youth when maybe Halloween resonates the most with us.

• 7:03Speaker 04

  I feel like the music that reminds me the most of my childhood Halloweens, or just, you know, spooky times in my childhood, which were a lot of times, is the Goosebumps theme song, the theme song to the TV show Goosebumps. And I should clarify that I'm a millennial, so I'm a child of the 90s. And this song, just, it lives so large in my brain.

• 7:44Stephen Thompson?

  Hazel currently running out of the studio in there.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Actually, this song, it really slaps, like, as a piece of music.

• 7:51Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  So Goosebumps, that was your jam growing up? This is like, instantly takes you back to your childhood?

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Instantly it takes me back. I watched so much Goosebumps. I read the Goosebumps book series by R.L. Stine. And I feel like it was, it was like the Twilight Zone for being a child in the 90s. And it was scary. Some of those episodes were, even to this day, I'm like, that was kind of a lot for, for children's television.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  So I know about Goosebumps, but I've never seen it. I mean, I know it's like, I think it had a reboot. I think there was a movie.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  There was a movie. I don't think I saw the movie.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Movie.

• 8:31Stephen Thompson?

  And really like epic, extremely state of the art special effects.

• 8:39Speaker 04

  You know what? I, yes, yeah, really state of the art. I mean, at least it wasn't all CGI, I can say that much, but.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Well, I want to go next because I have something that also instantly takes me back to my childhood. And this actually isn't even a song, but it is synonymous with spooky season to me. And there, there are people of a certain generation, I think, when they hear this, they'll instantly know what it is.

• 9:03Speaker 05

  One dark and stormy night, a light appears in the topmost window in the tower of the old house. You decide to investigate, and you never return.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  So this is from 1964.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  OK.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  It's from an album, but it was played all through the 70s and 80s. It's the album.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  Played where?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  OK, so this is an album from Disneyland Records called Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House. For people of a certain age, this was inescapable. It was a Halloween tradition. Any haunted house you went to, it was playing. Any Halloween party you went to, it was playing. Or just trick or treating, you'd go to someone's house and invariably they'd have this playing on a record player on their front porch, or you could hear it coming from inside the house.

• 9:57Stephen Thompson?

  I definitely heard this in passing on several different front porches.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:01Stephen Thompson?

  Mentor, Ohio and Iola, Wisconsin.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the first half of the record, it's these little stories with that narrator. And every track is a new scenario, you know? But then the second half of the record is just the sound effects, you know, no narration or whatever.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  I feel inspired, honestly, to just start playing this in my home at all times. Like, I actually, I'm like, oh, this would be great ambiance for like dinner parties when people come over. Yeah.

• 10:31Stephen Thompson?

  Like, was it just brought out for trick or treaters?

• 10:34Speaker 02

  I mean, for the most part, but I had my own copy that I would just put on. Because I just.

• 10:39Stephen Thompson?

  I mean, I was the same way with The Chipmunks Christmas.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  I mean, because, I mean, you know, we, Stephen, we do the goofy holiday show every year. That whole thing that we started more than a decade ago, that was my baby that I started because, just because I love all the sound effects and I love doing all the

• 10:55Stephen Thompson?

  You have always loved the sound effects record.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  All right, we've got to take a quick break here, but we'll have more songs for the new Halloween canon right after this. And you're listening to All Songs Considered from NPR Music.

• 11:07Speaker 00

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• 12:20Speaker 02

  It's All Songs Considered from NPR Music. I'm Robin Hilton. I'm here with Hazel Sills and Stephen Thompson. And we're talking about songs for a new canon of Halloween music. Well, let's talk about new songs, because that's one of the categories. We did nostalgia. We did songs that are truly terrifying. Let's talk about some of the new stuff that's come out that we think belongs in the canon.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was thinking about this compilation that was released this year by an artist I wasn't familiar with. Her name is Oksana Lind. She's like a Venezuelan composer. And she mostly made stuff like from the late 80s to the mid 90s. And I want to play a song of hers called "Horizontes Lejanos."

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, very John Carpenter. Like, I could, I could hear this during a scene of like The Thing, that movie, The Thing, or one of his films. So Oksana Lind is totally new to me, too. You know, she, I guess, started recording as far back as the 1980s, but didn't put out an album until just a few years ago.

• 13:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's crazy that we don't, like, we haven't heard this before because it just feels so ethereal and weird and like twisted. And I feel like you could play this music on the porch when the trick or treaters are coming up if you wanted to.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Nobody would stop. They would just keep walking.

• 13:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's just such a sense of dread to this song. Kind of like the Fever Ray song that we played earlier. You know, just feeling like I'm being pulled into this other world.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  So that's from an album that just came out this year called Travicius from Oksana Linda. Stephen, what do you got for something new to add to the canon?

• 14:14Stephen Thompson?

  Well, I think this song is pretty clearly engineered specifically to be part of the Halloween canon. And I happen to think it does a phenomenal job of it. Florence and the Machine, there's a new album coming out on Halloween. And the first single from it feels so Halloween friendly. It is called Everybody Scream.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  You know, I hadn't thought of it until hearing this song in the context of this conversation we're having. But this song has that borderline goofy, super theatrical kind of melodrama to it that I hadn't quite clocked until hearing it. Like even the organ sound at the beginning, you know?

• 15:11Stephen Thompson?

  I think the difference is she's committed. She gives a committed vocal. And I think there, she's not coming in there like, I am here to suck your blood. She's like singing the hell out of it.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:25Stephen Thompson?

  And like letting the instrumentation do the work of, you know, kind of the organs. And it's spooky and it's a little silly.

• 15:33Speaker 04

  I get the sense that she is creating this themed fantasy. And she is existing within it as the artist that she already is. Like this, this song, you know, with the organ and, you know, it has these kind of like Halloween hallmarks. And it's clearly pointed towards the holiday and has a purpose. It doesn't feel that out of line with her catalog or the work that she already makes as an artist.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, her music's always had drama.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  And been very. Very theatrical and And kind of an undercurrent that's a little creepy.

• 16:08Stephen Thompson?

  Well, and when we're talking about who is the Mariah Carey of Halloween, this is clearly a bid for that. And I would be remiss if I if I failed to mention that Lady Gaga has a new song called The Dead Dance.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:19Stephen Thompson?

  Which has a video directed by Tim Burton. And she's like a creepy rag doll. Kind of

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Twitchy jerky.

• 16:26Stephen Thompson?

  Twitching around to this very Halloween coded song.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  So we'll add that one to the Halloween canon. Florence and the Machine, Everybody Scream. Brand new song for the something new category that we're we're adding to the canon. I'm gonna pick a song by Ethel Kane.

• 16:43Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  A song called House of Psychotic Women. From the sort of weird one off album that Ethel Kane did at the top of the year. Perverts. Called Perverts.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Again, there's that contrast, like the music is so unnerving. And she's saying, I love you over and over again. So creepy. And and all the words are kind of buried. Like they're kind of coming up from underground or something.

• 17:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, Ethel is just such a master. You know, she's so young, but she's such a master already in her career at this very kind of specific strain of American Gothic music in a way that I feel like so few artists make. She is just so good at creating these desolate, like haunted houses of songs. Like, there's so much going on in there, even though it feels quite minimal. And yeah, I mean, this is music that truly scares me, actually.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  So the song "House of Psychotic Women", with I think all the E's are missing from that, and it's all one word. "House of Psychotic Women", from "Perverts", from Ethel Kane. Just came out at the top of this year. All right, we've got one more category to talk about, and that is the Mount Rushmore of Halloween songs. These are the songs that are so undeniable, such classics, that they belong on the Mount Rushmore of Halloween songs.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  So this song, total classic to me. I think should be on the Mount Rushmore of Halloween music. I'm curious to know what you guys think. When I think scary Halloween music, I think The Cramps. I think of that is a band that is basically like, they're giving monsters, they're giving, they, every day is Halloween for them. And so I wanted to play their song, "I Was a Teenage Werewolf".

• 19:16Speaker 02

  The sleight of hand that this song pulls off is that it's got just a hint of camp to it.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Which you could totally imagine this scoring a truly horrifying moment in a film, or haunting your dreams.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like, it's not Monster Mash, it's not thriller. It's like dialed down enough in that like campy vampiric energy that it's cool. Like, they are, at the end of the day, this punk rockabilly group. There's a costuminess to it, and there's like a goofiness to it, but it's not over the top. It's not Party City.

• 19:54Stephen Thompson?

  Right. It's a more dialed down, "Scream and Jay Hawkins, I put a spell on you", right? Like, it's going hard instrumentally, but it's not shrieking at you.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could see this on the Mount Rushmore. But who is going next to The Cramps, Stephen, on this Mount Rushmore of Halloween songs?

• 20:14Stephen Thompson?

  Well, when we're talking about the Halloween canon and the songs and albums that kind of come back and chart every year, I'm always shocked that one of those isn't a duo from 2009 called Dead Man's Bones. Dead Man's Bones was the duo of a guy named Zack Shields and a fella you might have heard of named Ryan Gosling.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  And little someone.

• 20:39Stephen Thompson?

  Little someone. And feeling very Paul Harvey, like, "And that little boy whom nobody loved grew up to be Ryan Gosling."

• 20:49Speaker 02

  That's a terrible imitation.

• 20:50Stephen Thompson?

  It was terrible. That didn't sound anything like Paul Harvey at all. But basically, Dead Man's Bones, these two friends, one of whom happened to be Ryan Gosling, you know, they grew up obsessed with Halloween, grew up obsessed with haunted houses and the haunted mansion ride at Disneyland. And they made an album together in 2009, and they made a bunch of Halloween-themed music, including this song, which belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Halloween music. It's called "My Body's a Zombie for You."

• 21:38Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah, and like, it has an A-list superstar at the head of it.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  But he wasn't at the time. I just was checking out his filmography. Like, he had done a handful of things. He had done The Notebook.

• 21:49Stephen Thompson?

  The Notebook.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  The Notebook.

• 21:50Stephen Thompson?

  By that point, it was definitely...

• 21:52Speaker 02

  But, but, his career did not really take off until like 2010, 11, when, you know, when he did Drive and...

• 21:58Stephen Thompson?

  I mean, but like, you look at the play count on Spotify, and that song has been played like eight million times.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Wow. Yeah. Well, mine is one that could have gone in the nostalgia category as well, because, well, I think you'll hear why.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  The Great Pumpkin Waltz, Vince Guaraldi from The Great Pumpkin.

• 22:35Speaker 04

  Classic.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  Absolute classic. I think admittedly, it's not quite the level of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Maybe not that instantly recognizable, but no less a classic.

• 22:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I grew up watching all of the Peanuts, like the Christmas special, the Thanksgiving special, the Halloween special. Had so much affinity for the Halloween special where I laugh every time, even to this day, when Charlie Brown goes trick or treating and he gets a rock.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  I got a rock.

• 23:03Speaker 04

  I got a rock at every house. Everyone else gets candy. That's still like the funny. It's so twisted and sad. Why would you give him a rock?

• 23:12Stephen Thompson?

  You just keep a bowl of rocks in case Charlie Brown shows up.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  Every time. Yeah, no, I, this, this also could have gone in the nostalgia bracket for me because I just, I love this music so much.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  So we'll go out on this then from Vince Guaraldi, The Great Pumpkin Waltz from The Great Pumpkin. Stephen Thompson and Hazel Sills, thanks so much to you both.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  And for NPR Music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's All Songs Considered.