Not-So Corny Halloween Playlist

Are you tired of having nothing better to play at your Halloween parties than “One Eyed Purple People Eater,” “Monster Mash,” “Mannheim Steamroller” and “Thriller?” (Probably yes, except for “Thriller.”) Do you share the same music library as me? (Probably not.) Do you at least share similar musical tastes as I do? (I don’t know, you tell me.) Then sit right back as I share 10 songs that will be a hit at any Halloween party. Well, any cool Halloween party, that is.

1. AC/DC, “Hell’s Bells” - you’ve probably heard this jam at every major sporting event that you’ve attended, but it honestly is a good song. Most of the time, AC/DC’s “rock band of the damned” shtick was about as convincing as every other hard rock band’s attempts, which is to say, not very. Is it the fact that this is the first song on the band’s first album after the death of lead singer Bon Scott? Is it the somber tolling of the bells that open the song? Whatever it is, this is the rare AC/DC song that actually comes off as menacing as, well, hell.

2. Fleetwood Mac, “Gold Dust Woman” - the scariness of this song has less to do with the lyrics, which like many Fleetwood Mac songs, concern relationships gone horribly wrong, than the combination of guitar, mandolin and creepy, bitter vocals from Stevie Nicks.

3. Iggy and the Stooges, “Gimme Danger” - Iggy Pop himself could be a fairly intimidating figure in concert, smearing himself in peanut butter and rolling around in broken glass. But usually his songs would start out full blast so they weren’t usually surprising. That’s why this song, which starts out slow and brooding and gradually builds up into a whirling sonic storm, catches you so off guard. Lyrics like “there's nothing left alive/but a pair of glassy eyes/raze my feelings one more time/yeah!” add to the creepiness.

4. Nirvana, “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” - take one suicidal grunge singer months away from blowing his brains out, add a brooding cello-heaving string backing and add them to an old blues/folk song about a guy interrogating his girlfriend about her whereabouts the previous night. You’ll get lyrics like “in the pines, in the pines/where the sun never shines” and one truly terrifying song. Probably not a good choice for any raucous, celebratory parties we college kids are known to have though. Maybe you can break it out for All Souls’ Day.

5. Richard and Linda Thompson, “Back Street Slide” - paranoid folk rock with a beat for the win! The following lyrics say it all: 
“The backstreet slide, the backstreet slide
They're gonna get you, dead or alive
Stab you in the back with a kitchen knife
Doing the backstreet slide
Do it all day, (the backstreet slide)”

6.Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter” - less for its connections with the infamous 1969 Altamont concert than the extremely creepy intro. “Midnight Rambler,” which appears to be about a serial killer, would also work for this setting though.

7&8. Tom Waits, Rain Dogs - no one does creepy better than Waits, even if he was worse at making party songs than Nirvana. This 1985 album contains one unsettling song after another. There’s “Cemetery Polka;” there’s “Tango ‘Til They’re Sore,” which contains the line “I’ll tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past.” And then there are “Singapore” and “Rain Dogs,” which don’t sound cheery to begin with but cross over into Halloween classic territory because of Robert Quine’s guitar work. Also, you can always break out this album again for Valentine’s Day and play “Downtown Train.”

9. The White Stripes, ”The Union Forever” - you’d think a song about the movie Citizen Kane would just be merely weird. Instead, with its menacing, repetitive guitar chords and Jack White’s screeches and growls, it comes off as weird and creepy.

10. The Heavy, “Sixteen” - any alt-rock song sampling Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ Halloween classic “I Put a Spell on You” deserves to make this playlist.

Happy Halloween!