Halloween is my favorite, favorite, favorite holiday.
To celebrate this glorious Halloween weekend, I've decided to put together my top ten songs of Halloween. Some of them are a little cliche, a few of them expected, none of them shocking, but they're all good clean, ear-candy fun and make fabulous...I mean terrrrifying additions to any Halloween gathering playlist.
So without further ado: Say What About Music's Top Ten Halloween Tracks To Get Down To!!
In no particular order...
ONE
Thriller, Michael Jackson
I realize this song is getting a fair amount of press on SayWAM, but really...It's so not Halloween unless Thriller's playing somewhere. The epic costumes in that video paired with some equally epic dancing all within an overwhelmingly epic video that forever set the standards for music videos? It just doesn't get better - or more ghoulish for that matter - than MJ's Thriller. Besides, watching everyone at a party (probably drunkenly, I mean come one...) try to do the Thriller dance is amazing. You know it's true!
TWO
Danse Macabre, Camille Saint-Saëns
This song embodies all that is truly the spirit of Halloween...To me at least.
At midnight, every Halloween, Death appears and calls for the dead to reemerge from their graves to dance their delicious death dance while he plays his fiddle. The skeletons dance their bones off until dawn, at which time they have to go back to their graves for another year.
A little music geekery, if you will...
Danse Macabre is so visual. It begins with 12 single notes played on a harp (the note's a D in case you were wondering) to signify the clocking striking midnight. Something that is especially interesting about this song is that the solo violin's highest string (the E) is tuned down to an E-flat; that alone gives the song an eery feeling from the get-go. That solo violin (Death's representation) alternates between two tritones (or "Devil's Chords" appropriately enough), another off-putting sound. Anyway, so from there the song builds and builds and builds and you can hear loads of xylophones dancing around like ratting bones of 100 year-old skeletons until finally!........It stops. A much more pleasant, uplifting violin solo is played as dawn breaks and the skeletons crawl back into their graves.
THREE
The Monster Mash, Bobby "Boris" Pickett
Believe it or not, this song actually hit number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1962 - the year the song was released. Though it was the single, The Monster Mash was one of several monster-related songs.
And it's just so cute!
FOUR
This Is Halloween, Danny Elfman
It's no secret that I love and all sorts of adore the move 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'. I have seen that movie more times that could ever be counted, have four (that's right, FOUR) versions/mediums of the sound track, and have boxes of memorabilia stashed around my bedroom at home-home. One of the things I love about this movie is that, even though it's primarily centered around Christmas, Halloween - and how great Halloween is - bookends the movie. Wonderful. Also, Jack's entrance is fantastic...Just sayin'...
FIVE
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Bach
Though I cannot recall right now why this song always brings about images of huge, ominous stone castles on dark and stormy nights, but it really does...
SIX
Time Warp, The Rocky Horror Picture Show
I really don't think I need to blurb about this one...
SEVEN
Beetlejuice - Main Theme, Danny Elfman
This is just another one of those tracks that has that delicious Halloween feeling to it. That shouldn't be all that surprising because it was written by Danny Elfman, like item number four on this list. Also, 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' and 'Beetlejuice' were directed by Tim Burton (the Duke of Darkness himself). Haunting, subtle vocals, a driving extreme low tones playing in unison with extreme-high tones, the trills, the chills: Of course this theme song feels like Halloween.
EIGHT
Evil Woman, Electric Light Orchestra
Whether or not it's because I'm remember Disney's Monster Hits special from the late 80s, or simply because the title has the word 'witch' in it...This song screams Halloween to me.
NINE
Werewolves of London, Warren Zevon
I really don't think this needs any explanation either....But, a big thanks to 'Sus for the contribution. : )
TEN
I Put a Spell on You, Screamin Jay Hawkins
All I can say about this....is they don't call him "Screamin" Jay for nothing...
Oh, and also, yes. 'The Hocus Pocus' version of this song is...well...better...So you can find a video of that right here: Click it!
Alright, kids, there you have it: SayWAM's Top Ten.
In closing, I would just like to wish you all a fantastically frightening, super safe, happy Halloween.
And for an extra special treat, the 1929 Disney Short, "Skeleton Dance".
-Jenna
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