Top 10 Lesser-Known Halloween Songs to Freshen Up your Spooky Season Parties
It’s the last week of October, and we all know what that means: reeling from the aftereffects of a cop-fucking bootlicker being elected to Vancouver’s mayoral office it’s Halloween time, baby! A favored holiday among queers and other deviants, popular activities for Halloween include trick-or-treating, munching butts, dressing up, and otherwise getting in touch with the terrifying, the ghoulish, and the horrible. Unfortunately, there is a far less frightening and more banal problem plaguing our festive Halloween gatherings, and that is the tired and repetitive Halloween playlist that will be repeated ad nauseam for the next week or so. We all know the staples: Monster, The Monster Mash, the Addams Family theme song, Thriller and hours upon hours of Ambient Halloween Spooky Sounds For Parties compilations from YouTube. In my humble opinion, we are overdue for a reset of our musical Halloween staples so we can enjoy these old classics all the more. Luckily for you, I have a Master’s degree in music composition and far too much time on my hands, so I have curated this top 10 list of lesser-known scary songs for use in your Halloween playlists! I haven’t been to a Halloween party in almost a decade, but I imagine one hint of any of these will have your guests screaming and running away from your house. The songs are arranged in order from least to most scary, and each entry contains a recommendation on the ideal situation or mood for each work, as well as a link for listening.
10: The Moomins (Miller & Shill, 1982)
This soundtrack album to the 1980s Polish-made Moomin cartoon is creepy-in-a-cute-way, but it has some deeply scary moments. One of my favourites is the ninth track, Midwinter Rites, which conjures to my mind the image of a small thing, snuggled up in a blanket while terrifying monsters dance and chant around a bonfire. Comfort and wariness and fear all run hand in hand within Miller and Shill’s masterpiece, which is why I just had to include it on this list. Arrange tracks 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 14 for the ultimate cute and creepy experience.
9: Erwartung from Vier Lieder, Op. 2 (Schoenberg, 1899)
To find the scary parts of this one, we need to look at the text. “From the sea-green pond/ near the red villa/ beneath the dead oak/ the moon is shining.” “From the red villa/near the dead oak,/ a woman’s pale hand/ waves to him.” If this isn’t Halloween-appropriate imagery, I’ll return my extra-large box of assorted candies. The music is wavy and filigree, emblematic of the composer’s early attempts to emulate the art deco Jugenstil movement in visual art and architecture. It’s more creepy than outright scary, but it’s also very pretty. Good for those laid-back Halloween parties where it’s just you and your best friends.
8: Bluebeard’s Castle (Bartok, 1918)
I will someday write an essay on here about my taxonomy of funny, scary, and horny as the three pillars of opera, but for now I will content myself with recommending that you put this deeply scary and very horny opera on your Halloween playlist. Bartok’s score is decadent beyond words, capturing the essence of its characters - the innocence and desire of Judith and the terrifying sadness and wroth of Bluebeard. I won’t spoil the ending, so just trust me when I say this is early Modernist terror of identity and loss of self at its finest. For maximum effect, play at your local kink gathering or play party.
7: In Vain (Haas, 2003)
Haas’ gargantuan microtonal work is based on a chord filled with tritones, which is a good start. Much like Risonanze Erranti higher on the list, In Vain is structured in a start-and-stop fashion with a lot of uneasy silences and moments of soft tension. The end of the piece portrays an unending cycle of motion, with a microtonal scale reminiscent of the Shepard tone gradually coalescing into a rapid oscillation of pitches and then turning back again. There is no real end to this commentary on the cyclicality of politics - Haas wrote the piece in response to a surge of support for right-wing ideas in his native Austria - which makes it a perfect track to listen to as you contemplate the inexorable descent of our Western society into fascism. Excellent for frights at a gathering of political science nerds or ensemble conductors.
Listen and view the score here
6: Pierrot Lunaire (Schoenberg, 1912)
That’s right, there are two Schoenberg pieces here, because as a composer I have to pay respect to the classics. You might be wondering at Pierrot Lunaire’s placement on this list - why is it not even in the top 5?Unfortunately for good old Arnold, Pierrot’s ubiquity as a default example of “scary contemporary classical” (yes, I know Schoenberg isn’t even remotely “contemporary,” it makes me mad too) and this ubiquity has robbed it of some of its power. It’s still beautiful and scary - the image of Pierrot drinking moonlight through his eyes freaked me out as an undergrad - but it’s really only on this list because of its track record. Play this at a gathering of sopranos or mezzos who are learning to do sprechstimme and you’ll have them frightened in no time.
5: Dark Magus (Davis, 1974)
Dark Magus would be higher on this list if it weren’t so damn groovy. It’s an avant-garde Miles Davis album, which means it’s busy and chaotic and there are lots of noises that I can’t describe and don’t understand. It’s heavy and relentless and rhythmic in all the right ways, and is a perfect soundtrack for your drug-fueled orgies or other horrific acts. For bonus scariness, begin playing at the guitar solo four minutes into the second track.
4: Risonanze Erranti (Nono, 1986)
A personal inspiration of mine, this piece serves as a great replacement for all those “Spooky Halloween Sound Compilation”s you might be tempted to put on as ambience during your Halloween gathering. Risonanze Erranti is chock-full of spooky moments: the score’s text is all in upper-case for some reason, it has creepy Sardinian bells, and the tuba part goes into trumpet range. There are many very soft or silent passages juxtaposed with extreme and violent eruptions of percussion. I don’t exactly know what this piece is trying to say, but I do know that you should play this at a gathering of low brass players for extra chills and thrills.
3: Anthracite Fields, Mvt. 1 (Wolfe, 2014)
The text of the first half of this piece is just the names of people named John who died in coal mines. It has several jumpscares. For bonus points, play the third movement (which sets a speech calling for better working conditions for miners) in front of a Tesla or Amazon executive.
2: Lost Highway (Neuwirth, 2003)
The opening to this opera adaptation of David Lynch’s film is seriously terrifying - it uses not one, but two tam-tams! Seriously, though, there’s no way I wouldn’t include this piece on a Halloween playlist. The subject matter - someone sneaking into your house and videotaping you, randomly turning into someone else while in prison, having sex - is mind-bogglingly Halloween-appropriate. Do yourself a favour by turning the lights off and giving this a listen.
1: The Clown (Mingus, 1957)
Before there was the Joker, there was Pierrot. Before there was The Joker (2019), there was The Clown. This entire album oozes avant-garde jazzy creepiness, but its crown jewel and title track blows everything on this list out of the water in terms of scariness. Narrator Jean Shepherd improvises a story about a titular down-on-his-luck clown who comes to realize that his best bet for making people laugh is to injure himself on stage; the ending finds him potentially dying from a sandbag falling on his head, to thunderous applause and a standing ovation. Mingus and company’s musical accompaniment is as terrifying as it needs to be. Above a circus waltz we hear Shafi Hadi’s alto saxophone climb pentatonically only to hang on a questioning flat thirteenth; Shepherd’s initial description of the clown’s plight is accompanied by unsettling free improvisation. Musical affectations familiar to the point of roteness seem fresh and disturbing here; the occasional piano cluster, trombone glissando, sharp tritone, or rapid col legno on the bass accentuate Shepherd’s expertly-woven plot. the waltz becomes gradually more and more inflected with jazz mannerisms as the clown descends into madness, cementing Mingus’ intended association of the clown to those jazz artists who are lauded most after they die young, and his questioning of a media culture which sensationalized the “dangerous” lives and deaths of jazz musicians. Socially conscious, groovy, and unnerving all at once, The Clown is sure to be a hit at any Halloween gathering.
Conclusion
These are my semi-serious top recommendations for songs to freshen your Halloween playlists, and if you disagree, you’re wrong. Give your spooky gathering some much-needed pep and make a name for yourself as the only party host in town willing to play an entire avant-garde jazz album as ambient music. I don’t know anything about hosting or attending parties, but I can only imagine that longer music equals longer staying time for your guests, which is a metric that I assume is very important for this sort of thing. Above all, though, if you’re looking for custom-made scary music for any occasion, you should hire one of your composer friends to make some for you (hint, hint). Stay safe out there, and I wish you all a very happy Halloween.