"The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies realized...lifting a trap door in the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators swimming around in that subterranean river beneath" - Stephen King
Regardless of what you think about Stephen King as an author, the man at least understands the psychology behind what he does. The "alligators" that King speaks of are the darker parts of our psyche. And while I disagree with the idea that we must indulge them to keep sane, I do believe that they need to be indulged all the same. Everyone has a way of sating their secret dark side. Unsurprisingly, I listen to music. Scary music.
I don't say that to be edgy. Nor, for that matter, did most of these artists make these songs to be edgy. When you get down to brass tax, music is just another form of art. And art has always been used to convey horror. Goya painted it, Romero put it on film, Lovecraft wrote it and groups like Throbbing Gristle recorded it. Despite their macabre, bizarre intonations, each of these songs is an excellent piece of art. And like all good art invoking fear, they entertain, discomfort and intrigue all at the same time.
The following songs are scary. They were designed to make listeners nervous and uncomfortable. Each goes about it in a different way, but all of them are very effective in one form or another. Some of them go for pronounced "jump" scares, while others use disturbing themes to get into listeners' minds. The best of them use their arrangements to create a disquieting atmosphere, and the lyrics whip the imagination into a frenzy. Either way, counting down, here are some of the scariest songs I've privileged to hear.
7. Subway Song by the Cure
Prior to 1982's Pornography, most of the Cure's catalog was pretty sanitary stuff. The one run they made at doing anything truly frightening was the closing track on side one of their debut album, and it's fairly cheap scares at that. I'll let you listen to the song to figure out why. The song details a woman walking home at night from a subway. She notices that footsteps are following her, but she's too scared to confront them. The minimalist melody feature arrhythmic guitar chords and a steady baseline to replicate the footsteps. "Subway Song" is tense, building the illusion that something awful is going to happen by the end of the track. It does. Despite being something of a cheap thrill, "Subway Song" is damned effective at freaking the absolute piss out of anyone who's never heard it before.
6. Pirate Jenny by Nina Simone
"Pirate Jenny" is a song from the 1928 music Tenpenny Opera, and was meant to be little more than the private fantasies of a maid. Nine Simone's 1964 cover, however...that's something else. Recorded at a time when African Americans could literally be killed for registering to vote, Simone channeled her rage at current affairs into a cover not implicitly, but unmistakably aimed at white America. Accompanied by a spooky, saloon style piano, Simone's emotions oscillate between broiling rage, bloodlusty satisfaction and gleeful madness as she leads pirates to the town's sack and slaughter. If her proclamation, "That'll learn ya!" and the carnage that precede it don't send chills up your spine, I don't know what's wrong with you.
(Note: While this isn't the scariest song on this list, per say, it is definitely the best. Ballads sung this well and emoting so masterfully are hard to come by)
5. Misery's the River of the World by Tom Waits
When it comes to frightening music, the question is not whether T-Waits songs are scary enough for consideration, but which one of the plethora of options is scariest. There are so many good choices that it's hard to nail one down. This song, though, is the one that plays when you enter Hell. It's a long rant about how fucked up the world is set to a psychotic carnival melody that never manages to be melodic enough to not to terrify. Waits is in full snarl mode on this track, growling out his condemnations of mankind with gleeful abandon. While kids check their closets for the Boogie Man, the Boogie Man checks his for Tom Waits.
4. We Drive East by Death in June
This song is as brilliant as it is unsettling. It details the hapless civilians caught between the totalitarian Soviets and the brutal Nazis during the battle of Stalingrad. A trumpet acting as a war horn and marching drum play in the background while two singers trade licks; one singing about the mindless Nazi drive to eradicate human life and the other the perpetual meat grinder that the communists threw themselves into. The lyrical themes fit the chaotic, discordant music perfectly to create a disturbing anthem for the human toll that war takes on the people who deserve it least.
3. Facing the Wind by Nico
This is not the Nico from "Sunday Morning". It's the Nico from "Venus in Furs". On this track, the lyrics are not the creep stars, even in the slightest. The "it" she's singing about having a hold on her could be mean anything, so it's not so bad. The music, however, is terrifying. I would love to tell you what that medley of instruments is, but the truth is that there's so much insanity going on there, that I have no earthly idea. An accordion, maybe? Something that makes a howling sound, anyway. Listening to this song gives me the creeps because there's something about it that just feels wrong. That something being everything about it. This is un-music, and scary in the same way that monsters in Lovecraft stories defy geometry.
2. Hamburger Lady by Throbbing Gristle
(Note: I was going to talk about the song "Slug Bait" here by the same band, but every time I sat down to write about it, I found myself too uncomfortable to get through the entry. If you want to hear the song that's too disturbing for me to even listen to all the way through, much less write about, you can find it here. Just don't say I didn't warn you.)
If someone tells you that electronic music can't be scary, they're full of shit. At the very least, they've never heard Throbbing Gristle. TG has long made horror a part of its shtick, and damn few artists do it better than them. At least "Hamburger Lady" is one of their less disturbing songs lyrically, and it's about a burn victim. Not that you can really tell. The heavy, siren-like bass and distorted whatever-the-hell-you-call-that-ringing-nightmare make the rather subdued vocals nigh impossible to understand. This is some serious horror film music.
1. Hello Skinny by the Residents
Horror is a funny thing. If the Beatles had done this song, it just would have been a cute little ditty about a re-salesman. Instead, it was done by a band that looks like this. And this. And a few times, this. They describe themselves as an "art collective", which is apparently how they started saying "Nightmare Factory" back in the 70s. The Residents do scary music the same way Germans make cars; very well, and with frightening efficiency. From their screeching avant-garde cover of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" to the aptly name "Die in Terror", the group is no stranger to making skins crawl.
But if you ask me, the band was best at terror when they kept it simple. "Hello Skinny" is simple. And boy howdy is it terrifying. Unlike most of their work, "Skinny" is driven by a clarinet and a bass guitar. The resulting nightmarish sound is matched by the singer's menacing vocal performance (and I say "the singer" because even after 40 odd years recording, nobody has ever seen the band's faces, or knows who they are behind the eyeball masks. Just let the thought that the person sitting next to you could be a Resident sink in for a second). And all of that is done for a song about what, exactly? A grizzly murder? A psychopath in an asylum?
Nope. Just a skinny dude who sells Louis Armstrong records to truckers. Perhaps what makes this song scarier than anything is the anticipation. Both the music and the vocals lead you to believe that something awful is going to happen the whole time, but it never does. Unless, of course, you count the maniac chant at the end, which could just be a warped vinyl, or could be someone getting the holy shit murdered out of them.
It's really up to the listener.
Anyway, that's my rundown of songs that you can scare the shit out of yourself with this Halloween. Sweet dreams everyone!
The following songs are scary. They were designed to make listeners nervous and uncomfortable. Each goes about it in a different way, but all of them are very effective in one form or another. Some of them go for pronounced "jump" scares, while others use disturbing themes to get into listeners' minds. The best of them use their arrangements to create a disquieting atmosphere, and the lyrics whip the imagination into a frenzy. Either way, counting down, here are some of the scariest songs I've privileged to hear.
7. Subway Song by the Cure
Prior to 1982's Pornography, most of the Cure's catalog was pretty sanitary stuff. The one run they made at doing anything truly frightening was the closing track on side one of their debut album, and it's fairly cheap scares at that. I'll let you listen to the song to figure out why. The song details a woman walking home at night from a subway. She notices that footsteps are following her, but she's too scared to confront them. The minimalist melody feature arrhythmic guitar chords and a steady baseline to replicate the footsteps. "Subway Song" is tense, building the illusion that something awful is going to happen by the end of the track. It does. Despite being something of a cheap thrill, "Subway Song" is damned effective at freaking the absolute piss out of anyone who's never heard it before.
6. Pirate Jenny by Nina Simone
"Pirate Jenny" is a song from the 1928 music Tenpenny Opera, and was meant to be little more than the private fantasies of a maid. Nine Simone's 1964 cover, however...that's something else. Recorded at a time when African Americans could literally be killed for registering to vote, Simone channeled her rage at current affairs into a cover not implicitly, but unmistakably aimed at white America. Accompanied by a spooky, saloon style piano, Simone's emotions oscillate between broiling rage, bloodlusty satisfaction and gleeful madness as she leads pirates to the town's sack and slaughter. If her proclamation, "That'll learn ya!" and the carnage that precede it don't send chills up your spine, I don't know what's wrong with you.
(Note: While this isn't the scariest song on this list, per say, it is definitely the best. Ballads sung this well and emoting so masterfully are hard to come by)
5. Misery's the River of the World by Tom Waits
When it comes to frightening music, the question is not whether T-Waits songs are scary enough for consideration, but which one of the plethora of options is scariest. There are so many good choices that it's hard to nail one down. This song, though, is the one that plays when you enter Hell. It's a long rant about how fucked up the world is set to a psychotic carnival melody that never manages to be melodic enough to not to terrify. Waits is in full snarl mode on this track, growling out his condemnations of mankind with gleeful abandon. While kids check their closets for the Boogie Man, the Boogie Man checks his for Tom Waits.
4. We Drive East by Death in June
This song is as brilliant as it is unsettling. It details the hapless civilians caught between the totalitarian Soviets and the brutal Nazis during the battle of Stalingrad. A trumpet acting as a war horn and marching drum play in the background while two singers trade licks; one singing about the mindless Nazi drive to eradicate human life and the other the perpetual meat grinder that the communists threw themselves into. The lyrical themes fit the chaotic, discordant music perfectly to create a disturbing anthem for the human toll that war takes on the people who deserve it least.
3. Facing the Wind by Nico
This is not the Nico from "Sunday Morning". It's the Nico from "Venus in Furs". On this track, the lyrics are not the creep stars, even in the slightest. The "it" she's singing about having a hold on her could be mean anything, so it's not so bad. The music, however, is terrifying. I would love to tell you what that medley of instruments is, but the truth is that there's so much insanity going on there, that I have no earthly idea. An accordion, maybe? Something that makes a howling sound, anyway. Listening to this song gives me the creeps because there's something about it that just feels wrong. That something being everything about it. This is un-music, and scary in the same way that monsters in Lovecraft stories defy geometry.
2. Hamburger Lady by Throbbing Gristle
(Note: I was going to talk about the song "Slug Bait" here by the same band, but every time I sat down to write about it, I found myself too uncomfortable to get through the entry. If you want to hear the song that's too disturbing for me to even listen to all the way through, much less write about, you can find it here. Just don't say I didn't warn you.)
If someone tells you that electronic music can't be scary, they're full of shit. At the very least, they've never heard Throbbing Gristle. TG has long made horror a part of its shtick, and damn few artists do it better than them. At least "Hamburger Lady" is one of their less disturbing songs lyrically, and it's about a burn victim. Not that you can really tell. The heavy, siren-like bass and distorted whatever-the-hell-you-call-that-ringing-nightmare make the rather subdued vocals nigh impossible to understand. This is some serious horror film music.
1. Hello Skinny by the Residents
Horror is a funny thing. If the Beatles had done this song, it just would have been a cute little ditty about a re-salesman. Instead, it was done by a band that looks like this. And this. And a few times, this. They describe themselves as an "art collective", which is apparently how they started saying "Nightmare Factory" back in the 70s. The Residents do scary music the same way Germans make cars; very well, and with frightening efficiency. From their screeching avant-garde cover of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" to the aptly name "Die in Terror", the group is no stranger to making skins crawl.
 |
| "Oh, hai!" |
Nope. Just a skinny dude who sells Louis Armstrong records to truckers. Perhaps what makes this song scarier than anything is the anticipation. Both the music and the vocals lead you to believe that something awful is going to happen the whole time, but it never does. Unless, of course, you count the maniac chant at the end, which could just be a warped vinyl, or could be someone getting the holy shit murdered out of them.
It's really up to the listener.
Anyway, that's my rundown of songs that you can scare the shit out of yourself with this Halloween. Sweet dreams everyone!
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