Halloween Songs That Aren't "Monster Mash"

It was a graveyard smash. It was also 1962. Here are ten others.

Entries
10
Category
Music
Updated
  1. A tiny one-eyed purple horned creature's toy saxophone resting on a 1950s jukebox, a flying saucer hanging from the ceiling.

    10. The Purple People Eater

    Sheb Wooley · 1958

    Based on a kid's riddle and written in about an hour by a man who called it the worst song he'd ever written. It went to No. 1 for weeks. Nobody has ever settled whether the creature is purple or only eats purple people. Wooley knew. He chose silence.

  2. A black velvet cape folded on a closed coffin, surrounded by dripping candles and dead roses under a single spotlight.

    09. Bela Lugosi's Dead

    Bauhaus · 1979

    Recorded live in one take, six weeks after the band formed. It runs 9:36 and the vocals don't show up for nearly three minutes. Goth historians call it the first true goth rock record. It is, in fact, a song about a funeral that takes its time.

  3. A party table in a crypt set with a punch bowl, streamers and a dozen place settings, every chair empty, candles burning low.

    08. Dead Man's Party

    Oingo Boingo · 1985

    Danny Elfman's band, before he scored every Tim Burton movie, performing it in a cameo in Back to School. He still closes Nightmare Before Christmas concerts with it. Elfman is on this list twice, which seems fair for a man who dresses for it.

  4. Black painted footprints on a castle floor stepping one to the left and one to the right, beside a dusty old pocket watch.

    07. The Time Warp

    Richard O'Brien · 1975

    From The Rocky Horror Show, which O'Brien wrote and co-starred in as Riff Raff. It is less a song than a dance manual: a jump to the left, a step to the right. It reached the US Top 40 in the 80s. Some of us still can't do the pelvic thrust.

  5. A dark living room seen through rain-streaked window blinds, a single eye-shaped peephole of light glowing on the door.

    06. Somebody's Watching Me

    Rockwell · 1983

    Rockwell is Kennedy Gordy, son of Motown boss Berry Gordy, and the chorus is an uncredited Michael Jackson, with Jermaine on backing vocals. It hit No. 2. The song is about paranoia, and the hook is a famous person hiding in plain sight.

  6. A crooked hilltop curling into a spiral under a giant full moon, surrounded by twisted pumpkins and bare black trees.

    05. This Is Halloween

    Danny Elfman · 1993

    The opening number of The Nightmare Before Christmas, written by Elfman and sung by the residents of Halloween Town. It first hit the Billboard Hot 100 in November 2023, thirty years late, at No. 26. Fashionably dead.

  7. An open wooden coffin on a smoky nightclub stage beside a microphone stand, a skull on a stick leaning against it.

    04. I Put a Spell on You

    Screamin' Jay Hawkins · 1956

    Meant as a refined blues ballad. Then the producer brought ribs, chicken and enough booze for the whole session, and Hawkins said he didn't remember making the record. Radio banned it, it sold a million, and he started rising out of a coffin onstage.

  8. A plate of Chinese takeout and a menu on a rain-wet London street at night under a full moon, a tuft of gray fur caught on the napkin.

    03. Werewolves of London

    Warren Zevon · 1978

    Phil Everly suggested the idea, and Zevon, LeRoy Marinell and Waddy Wachtel wrote it in about 15 minutes. Mick Fleetwood and John McVie play on it. It was Zevon's only Top 40 hit, peaking at No. 21. His hair was perfect.

  9. A retro red rotary telephone ringing on a desk in an abandoned firehouse, green slime dripping down the receiver.

    02. Ghostbusters

    Ray Parker Jr. · 1984

    Written on a deadline of a few days, it spent three weeks at No. 1 and lost the Oscar to "I Just Called to Say I Love You." Huey Lewis sued, saying it sounded like "I Want a New Drug." They settled. Who you gonna call: lawyers.

  10. A red leather jacket draped over a cracked headstone in a moonlit cemetery, fog curling around one sparkly white glove on the grass.

    01. Thriller

    Michael Jackson · 1983

    Rod Temperton originally called it "Starlight." Vincent Price nailed his spoken outro in two takes, and John Landis's 13-minute video became the first music video in the National Film Registry. It only peaked at No. 4, which is the scariest fact here.

Honorable mentions

  • A row of small plastic skeleton figures mid-dance on a shelf, chattering teeth wind-up toys at their feet.

    Spooky, Scary Skeletons

    Andrew Gold · 1996

    Gold, who also wrote the Golden Girls theme, made it for a kids' album called Halloween Howls. It sat in obscurity until YouTube, a remix and TikTok made it Gen Z's Halloween anthem. It went Platinum in the US. Skeletons are patient.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A guillotine in a cobwebbed mansion hallway with a gold chain necklace and a pair of baggy parachute pants draped across it.

    Addams Groove

    Hammer · 1991

    The rap for The Addams Family movie. It went Top 10 in the US and UK, went gold, and won the Razzie for Worst Original Song. The video opens with Wednesday and Pugsley about to put Hammer in a guillotine. Hammer survived. So did the song, unfortunately.

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