As every major holiday should, there should be dozens of songs that remind one of said holiday. Like Christmas, Valentine's Day, and yes, even the Summer Season itself, Halloween has one hell of a lot of great songs to get you in the mood. While the songs for all of those holidays can only be tolerated around the month that precede them, Halloween songs simply seem to be listenable year-round.
I was originally going to make this a seasonal spinoff of my "Soundtracks For Summer" series, but I decided that this entry actually does flow better as a list than a bunch of entries that literally go on for the whole summer without covering many songs that I'll never get to. For one thing, the material I have for the songs won't cover full posts that look like I cobbled them together at 3am in one go like all of the other posts I've ever written.
Here now, is a list of my favorite Halloween songs.
This Is Halloween - The Nightmare Before Christmas
One can never go wrong with the opening song to the great "Nightmare Before Christmas." While the Marilyn Manson cover is fantastic, you can't quite beat the original.
Grim Grinning Ghosts - The Haunted Mansion
Thurl Ravenscroft is the glue that holds this excellently spooky song together.
Ghostbusters Theme
It wouldn't be a Halloween Song list without the excellent theme to Ghostbusters. Ray Parker Jr. only needed to record that one song and never work for the rest of his life.
The Monster Mash
Likewise for the late Bobby "Boris" Pickett tune Monster Mash. Interesting to note that the Simpsons episode "I Love Lisa," which dealt with Valentine's Day, both began and ended the episode with this song.
Note to self: Start a band called "The Cryptkicker Five."
Thriller
Thriller cannot, and never will, be forgotten. It's a fact that it's on my short list for "Favorite Music Videos Ever," and I absolutely love the ending where MJ spouts werewolf eyes, implying a sequel that will take place at Neverland Ranch.
Okay, so the embedded video is the Filipino Prisoner version, it still kicks ass.
Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo
Oh great, not ANOTHER Halloween song list with this! It deserves every right to be on those lists, this song kicks ass. I love the intro to this song, with the horns signifying that this is, indeed, a Dead Man's Party.
Garfield's Pirate Song - Garfield's Halloween Adventure
If there is one Halloween special that I love to death other than "Great Pumpkin," it's Garfield's Halloween Adventure. While the special has a few other great songs, some with Lou Rawls goodness (Scaredy Cat, What Should I Be), it's Garfield's rendition of "Yo-ho" that gets me aching for candy, candy, candy!
The Weird Science Theme
Another Oingo Boingo great, this theme complimented a great 80's movie that would lose all meaning if it were to be remade today. Back then, it was completely plausible for someone to load pictures of supermodels into a computer via a nonexistent scanner and create the ultimate sex symbol with it. I've attempted this experiment myself, and all I managed to get is this:
I apologize for unleashing her upon the world.
The vid above is my favorite cover of the song: The Tesla Coil version of Weird Science. Nothing quite says "Weird," "Science," and "Geekery" like Tesla Coils, and teaching them to play Oingo Boingo.
Halloween - Stephen Lynch
This is what Halloween truly means to me. It always manages to pull laughs out of me. This tune exemplifies our childhood fantasies of what was behind the doors of that house that always had the lights off, the universal sign of "I was too cheap and lazy to get to CVS to get a bag of Mr. Goodbars."
For more Halloween tunage, click here to go to X-Entertainment.com's Halloween Jukebox. 100 Songs to get your scare on!
1 comment:
I love almost all these songs. By the way, one of these songs was already gong to be the title to my Halloween day post. I'm not saying which song and I'll still use it anyway. I'll be listening to these today!
Post a Comment