Are you planning some spooktacular shenanigans this Halloween? Do you want your spooky season to be filled with the creepiest, crawliest tunes straight from the graveyard crypt?
Well, relax because I have a real witches’ brew of songs here for you, all carefully curated for maximum horror impact!
We’ve got some monstrous metal, some freaky film music and some bone-swinging party smashers that are guaranteed to raise the dead for an unholy boogie!
Make your Halloween party a nightmare to remember with this, the Greatest Halloween Playlist EVER! Mwahahahahahahahaha!
The Playlist at a Ghoulish Glance
Dead Man’s Party - Oingo Boingo
Sweet Transvestite - Frank N Furter/Tim Curry
Halloween Theme - John Carpenter
Cry Little Sister - Gerard McMann
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
I Put a Spell on You - Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
Extra Spookiness for Your Halloween Playlist
Dance Macabre - Ghost
Let’s kick things off with a bony, skeletal foot with this ghoulish banger from Ghost. These Swedes certainly commit to the horror, and really want to ‘bewitch you in the moonlight, if it’s alright’! Course it is! And I love the subtle pun in the title. A good start!
Pumpkinhead - The Misfits
Ramp up the energy levels with this ultra-melodic blaster from horror-punks The Misfits. I don’t care if you’re a Danzig purist, this tune is huge and it's what your Halloween party needs right now!
Dead - My Chemical Romance
Tap into the spirit of the moment (see what I did there) with MCR’s announcement of some big touring plans by including this song about being dead. What’s more Halloween than that? The band are anything but dead, so add their energy and exuberance to your Halloween playlist.
Pet Sematary - The Ramones
Eternal teenagers The Ramones pretty much look like they’ve sprung from the pages of a Stephen King novel. It’s suitable, then, that this tune is based on King’s particularly gnarly mid-80s novel about a place that brings things back from the dead…but at a price!
Dead Man’s Party - Oingo Boingo
Danny Elfman is probably the spookiest film composer ever, but that’s not what we need him for right now. No, we want a top track from his crazy 80s party band, Oingo Boingo! Yes, it’s a real band and he was the frontman, and he also included loads of his rhythmic musical training he picked up on during trips to Africa, to put some real groove into his music. It’s spooky, but it’s dancey!
Meet the Creeper - Rob Zombie
Let’s follow Oingo Boingo with a song from the ex-White Zombie frontman who is so creep-obsessed that he has a second career as a horror movie director! Meet the Creeper brings big riffs but attaches them to a cast-iron groove, continuing the vibe from earlier.
Thriller - Michael Jackson
Time for a classic! The jury’s out on how actually creepy this song would be without its John Landis (American Werewolf in London) directed video, but it does have that video, and so its horror credentials are therefore impeccable!
Monster Mash - Bobby Pickett
We’re entering cheese territory here, but who doesn’t want to hear the Monster Mash at a Halloween party? It’s such a famous tune but I still had to look up who sang it! This is a great song to lighten the mood and get everybody in a silly mood.
Sweet Transvestite - Frank N Furter/Tim Curry
Now that the party is in full swing, why not throw in this crowd-pleaser from the Rocky Horror Show? In truth, you could stick the whole album on at points throughout your night and nobody would complain. It’s subversive, spooky, glamorous gold, but I say dodge the Time Warp (yawn) and go with this one.
Damien - DMX
Hip hop crosses over into the horror world every now and then, and the results are usually well worth paying attention to. Damien, by DMX, is one such example. I think it’s based on Damien from the Omen movies, but even if it isn’t, there’s plenty of chat about selling your soul, living in the fog and generally being ridiculously scary, as only DMX can offer.
Halloween Theme - John Carpenter
OK, I’ve had enough of the beats. I want something that will send a shiver up the spine of everyone at your Halloween party. I’ve gone for the OG: the theme tune to one of the legit eeriest slasher movies that has ever existed. It’s John Carpenter’s sinister theme from his own movie, Halloween, of course!
Now, you can choose one of the versions with a 4/4 kick drum on it, if you want to preserve some degree of danceability, but let’s be honest: anyone dancing along to this wonky and evil 5/4 tune should be instantly locked up in Smith’s Grove Warren County Sanitarium. If their name happens to be Michael? Just leave.
Cry Little Sister - Gerard McMann
Time for a slow dance with the ghoul or witch you’ve been eyeing up all Halloween? This is the tune for you to make your move. Cry Little Sister is the theme to The Lost Boys, the vampire movie that made the monsters into eternally motorcycle riding, Jim Morrison referencing twenty-somethings who were playing teenagers.
Before Twilight made vampires sparkly & toothless, The Lost Boys made them sexy and dangerous. This is the mood you need. Go into that endless night!
After Dark - Tito & Tarantula
If that slow dance is going well, then I hope you’re happy that I chose this song next! It’s a dark, sensual number best known from ‘that scene’ in From Dusk Till Dawn. You don’t have to get up on a table and have beer poured at you to enjoy this belter of a tune, but I don’t imagine it would hurt, either.
Also, does this tune have the best guitar sound ever recorded on it or what?
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
I love a song with brackets in the title, especially when it seems unnecessary. I mean, how many people call this song ‘The Reaper’? Nobody.
Not only is this tune one of the best brackets songs, it also has an excellent horror movie heritage: it’s playing in the girls’ car in Halloween, and a cover version of it is used near the beginning of Scream.
It’s also about death and the Grim Reaper, so no Halloween vibe is complete without it!
I Put a Spell on You - Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
This moody, sensual creepfest has aged well over the decades. It’s almost like it’s under some sort of witchcraft itself! I Put a Spell on You is from waaay back in the mid-50s, and talks about owning and controlling people via black magic. Definitely not an example of how to conduct yourself during any Halloween festivities, but the song itself does have its own hypnotic charm.
You can go for Marilyn Manson’s version if you want, but my playlist is getting the original artist, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. After all, this guy carried a human skull named Henry on stage with him. Who’s gonna beat that?
Bat Out of Hell - Meatloaf
This is my last song for this playlist. I wanted the party to go out on a high note, with a triumphant singalong and everyone leaving with good vibes. No song does that - at least with matching Halloween imagery - as well as Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell!
I know that song’s not actually about being a giant bat swooping out of the gates of hell, but have you seen the album cover? That’s what I hear every time the song goes on.
Extra Spookiness for Your Halloween Playlist
Those tracks were my top choices for you, but you and I both know that you’ll need more songs than just those for a decent Halloween party. With that in mind, I’ve rustled up a few extra songs that will continue the creepy flavour long into the dark night…
- Jeepers Creepers - Harry Warren & Johnny Mercer
- Dead Babies - Alice Cooper
- Drunk on Halloween - Wallows
- Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath
- Call of Ktulu - Metallica
- Tupelo - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
- Haunted House - Teenage Bottlerocket
- Love Song For a Dead Man - Chris Afton
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula - Wojciech Kilar
- Masked Ball - Jocelyn Pook
- The Devil Went Down to Georgia - The Charlie Daniels Band
Okay, you creeps. If those tunes don’t make your Halloween celebrations go down with a graveyard smash, then you’ll need to consult your grimoires because you have no pulse in that decaying body of yours! Fetch your witchiest friends and form a circle or something.
Whatever you do this Halloween, may it be all sorts of good, clean, unwholesome fun.
