NPR Music - A new canon of Halloween music

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Who’s the Mariah Carey of Halloween? Labels and artists are trying to capitalize on spooky season, but these are the songs that belong in the creepy canon, from the truly terrifying to simply seasonal and nostalgic.Note: An earlier version of this episode appeared on All Songs Considered in 2025.Tell us what you think with a review on Apple or Spotify wherever you listen to podcasts.Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] artists and songs:Phoebe Bridgers: “Killer” from ‘Stranger in the Alps’Fever Ray: “If I Had A Heart,” from ‘Fever Ray’Sufjan Stevens: “John Wayne Gacy, Jr” from ‘Illinois’Jack Lenz: “Goosebumps” (theme from the TV show)Disneyland Records: “Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House”Alice Cooper: “Welcome to My Nightmare,” from ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’Oksana Linde: “Horizontes lejanos,” from ‘Travesias’Florence + the Machine: “Everybody Scream,” from ‘Everybody Scream’Ethel Cain: “Housofpsychoticwomn,” from ‘Perverts’girl in red: “We Fell In Love In October” (single)Mimicking Birds: “Bloodlines,” from ‘EONS’Van Morrison: “Moondance,” from ‘Moondance’The Cramps: “I Was A Teenage Werewolf,” from ‘Songs the Lord Taught Us’Dead Man’s Bones: “My Bodies a Zombie for You,” from ‘Dead Man’s Bones’Vince Guaraldi: “The Great Pumpkin Waltz,” from ‘The Great Pumpkin’Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hazel, I know you love this time of year. I do. I'm a spooky queen. Anything horrifying and creepy? That is your comfort zone. Yeah, I live in a haunted house. I've talked about being a vampire in the show before. Like, I'm technically at least 3,000 years old. Do you change your social media handles to, like, witch Hazel?

Or, like, Raboon, Goblin, Helton. No, I don't because I'm cool and I wouldn't do it. Are you besmirching the good name of everyone who does that year after year? I kind of, I've been off Twitter for so long that I actually forgot that people did that. Like they changed their names in kind of like a, almost like a roller derby type fashion. Exactly. Roller derby is a really good descriptor. But Stephen, I guess you must be into this time of year too and I didn't know that about you until now.

I am, but I'm really averse to doing any work. So, like, costumes, not my thing. Doing up, like, decorating my yard. I don't want to set foot in my yard. So, like, really, for me, Halloween is entirely candy and cereal. Booberry, by the way, best of the monster cereals. But that's the stuff that I love most. I know you wouldn't think that I'm into community, but that's what I love.

I want trick-or-treaters to come by. I want to decorate the yard. I want to do costumes. Do you scare the trick-or-treaters? Do you have something when they come up on the steps that scares them? Or is there a setup? There's a trap door right in front of my house. Got it.

When they ring the doorbell, it opens and they slide down into the... Can they just disappear? The town is like, we are losing our children. It's alarming. All the GPS is pointing to this one house. Well, it's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton. I'm here with NPR Music Editor Hazel Sills.

And our correspondent for all things a mile wide and an inch deep, Stephen Thompson. NPR dilettante correspondent. Host of New Music Friday, also with Pop Culture Happy Hour. Stephen, the idea for this year's Halloween episode is yours, so maybe you should set this whole thing up for us. Well, it's interesting. One of my beats at NPR is the Billboard charts. And if you look at the billboard charts in late October into early November, you'll see, like, all of a sudden, Ray Parker Jr.'s greatest hits hits, hits, hits, the album chart. Michael Jackson's greatest hits or the album thriller, you know, really, you know, pop up.

There's sort of a number of kind of Halloween staples that have started to form a Halloween music canon beyond the song Monster Mash by Bobby Boris Pickett. And what I pitched to Robin and what I wanted to discuss with you all is let's agree on a more expansive Halloween music canon. What songs do we want to see pop up around spooky season that are true to the season, but also are not just novelty songs, are not just like, gather around my boys and ghouls? You know, but like actually spooky songs that are, that rule. So we've got a number of categories we're going to do to sort of winnow down what kind of songs belong in the Halloween canon. I thought we would start with songs that are truly terrifying, not the goofball songs. All right. Well, I'll kick us off.

Not a terribly old song. But this song is genuinely spooky. It's also beautiful. It's also just by one of, you know, my favorite singers to pop up in the long. last decade or so. It's the song Killer by Phoebe Bridgers. breath. Can the kill of fire? Is there nothing left to do for us? I think part of what's creepy about it, first of all, it is a gloomy song. It is a, it is a song that feels autumnal. I think a lot of the horror and kind of the horror icons that speak most to me have a certain

level of like of humanity to them of like a certain intimacy like when I was you know ranking the monster serials or just like ranking the like kind of classic monsters your Frankenstein your dracula you're you're the mummy these various things the one that to me feels the scariest and the truest of the season is Dracula because like vamporism is so intimate this song felt true to that it felt It has this intimacy, but it's like a whisper about murder. Yeah, there's a spooky kind of almost like normalcy to this song, like what she's expressing about, do I have the capacity to do the kinds of things that I'm singing about? And I don't know, Phoebe is a good, she has such a great way of weaving in these kind of like creepy aspects of humanity into her work in a really intimate way.

You know, the thing that stood out to me that's kind of terrifying is that she taps into whatever is lurking in her own mind. And it's like sometimes the most terrifying thing in the world is your own thoughts. I mean, totally. Right? Who were you talking to, Robin? And I think specifically the fear of not being in control of your own thoughts and actions. And that's something that she alludes to in the song. One byproduct of spooky season is it feels like there are several different artists who are kind of trying to position themselves as like the equivalent of Mariah Carey at Christmas.

Yeah. Who is the Mariah Carey who like pops up and makes a zillion dollars every December? Like who is the Mariah Carey of Halloween? And I think Phoebe Bridgers is extraordinarily well positioned to be that person if she, wants to be. So, a killer from Phoebe Bridgers.

The real monster was inside us all along. That's from Stranger in the Alps came out in 2017. We're going to add

that one to the canon. Hazel, what do you want to add? And this is for the category songs that

are truly terrifying. Yeah, I was thinking about this and it's very rare, I feel like, for music to

terrify me. But I do think I often hear songs that sort of feel like almost like a scary movie in miniature. Like, I feel like I'm getting the tension and the dread that I would get

from watching a scary movie by listening to a song. And a song that I thought of when you mentioned this category is the song, If I Had a Heart by the artist Fever-ray. This will ever end because I won't move. This will never end because I won't more. love you. If I had a voice I'm saying, the night when I wake up, I've seen what tomorrow's... That is such a good pick. Yeah, I mean, I'm just sitting there.

The whole time I was listening to what I was like, Who are you going to call? It's creepy. It's just like, you know, you mentioned Phoebe Bridgers, being able to, stake acclaim to the like Halloween season artist. And I feel like Feveray is also in the running for that. Because, you know, costumes and spooky images and ghosts and monsters are just such a big part of the Feveray project.

And I think aside from the instrumentals of this music, the way it's so foreboding and it, it almost feels like like a Western score. It's like I feel like I'm walking down a dark road. The lyrics are so terrifyingly. opaque. It's like if I had a heart, I could love you. And, you know, it's this kind of almost like creature is singing about how much they want more and more. And it's like, well, more of what? What are you talking about? This song is, it's a scary song to me. I mean, everything Fever Ray does is terrifying to me. The videos, videos too, and you say some sort of creature, that's the spirit and

even the physical form that they inhabit in their videos, right? They're always monstrous. That is such a good entry in the Halloween canon. That's exactly what I'm talking about. I want to see Fever Ray pop up on the Billboard charts every October. Yeah. Well, I think the thing that's interesting about the billboard charts and this whole thing becoming a thing right now is that the cynical side of me immediately thought of how labels just want to capitalize on this thing that they're seeing. And they start to see like, wait a minute, if thrillers popping up on the charts this time of year, maybe we really need to be releasing more Halloween-themed music just so we can really capitalize on this. And then I've already taken it as far as, well, Fever-Ray will never get the attention that Fever-ray deserves because the oxygen is going to be sucked up by all the pop stars and the big labels and everything trying to capitalize on this market.

Halloween's gotten too commercial, man. It's just too commercial. There's too many spirit Halloween. It used to be about the fear, man. Well, I have one that I think is truly terrifying. So scary, I wonder if it's actually just too disturbing. And it's one that we've had on past Halloween episodes, but I think it's so undeniable to me and so horrifying.

I think we have to play it. His father was a drinker and his mother. Father cried in bed, holding John Wayne's t-shirts, when the swing set in his head. The neighbors they adored him for his humor and his conversation. Look underneath the house there. Find the few living things riding for. So if you don't know, 27 people,

even more, they were boys with their cars, summer jobs, oh my God. So if you don't know, this is John Wayne Gacey Jr. by Sufion Stevens from his 2005 album, Illinois. I think you could say, well, of course, the song is scary. He's talking about a serial killer. It's, you know, it's just, that's profoundly messed up.

But that actually isn't what's so scary to me about this song. It's that it's about that and it's otherwise so incredibly beautiful and delicate. It's that contrast that is so creepy and unsettling to me. I mean, I think honestly, I thought about, like, if this song sounded scary, like, the music itself was terrifying, it wouldn't work half as well as it does. Well, I think he's just like, it would be so easy for him to just slide up a couple months. You know, he's been sort of like one of the, you know, on the Mount Rushmore of Christmas music. Yeah. You know, he's put out tons, you know, every year he'd put out a new volume of Christmas music and send it to his friends.

He just needs to bump it up because he has other songs. And his songs often invoke ghosts and killers and spiritualism. You know, and kind of the liminal space between the living and the dead. So, I mean, he's a natural to just kind of make it yet another of the things that he does brilliantly. Yeah. Although I do feel like it would be hard to slip this into a Halloween party playlist. I feel like, you know, we've got to think about the context in which this Halloween music is being played. Your parties aren't as mopey as mine.

You know what it is? If we're adding this to the canon and you're talking about like, you wouldn't hear it at a party, but it's the silent night of Halloween songs, right? It's the quieter one that goes in with all the other seasonal songs that we would play for this. time of year. It's the silent night of Halloween. Yes. You can use that as a poll quote. I'm going to tell Asthmatic Kitty right now. That's yours. You're not wrong though because it's like, I don't know, when you make a Christmas music playlist, like it's not like it's all, you know,

jingle bell rock. Like there's different, there's different textures. Isn't there a movie where someone plays jingle bell rock? Is it home alone? No. You know what it is? It's Mean Girls, the end of Mean Girls. It's the stage show that they do. Yes. Yes. Wow. Crazy that you could find that reference faster than me.

All right. I have to be honest. We just watched that movie last week. Oh, okay. That makes sense. I was like noted mean girls. My daughter really wanted to watch it. And I said, you know, honestly, I've never seen that movie.

So we watch it. Wildly inappropriate for a 10-year-old, by the way. I think so. Yeah. She enjoyed. Fun. All right. We're doing these categories.

The next category is ghosts from your childhood. No, nostalgia. Let's just take a nostalgia trip here and talk about the songs, regardless of whether or not they're scary, that really take us back to the magical time of our youth when maybe Halloween resonates the most with us. I feel like the music that reminds me the most of my childhood Halloween's or just, you know, spooky times. in my childhood, which were a lot of times, is the Goosebumps theme song, the theme song to the TV show Goosebums, and I should clarify that I'm a millennial,

so I'm a child of the 90s, and this song just, it lives so large in my brain. Hazel currently running out of the studio in 10. Actually, the song, like, it really slaps, like as a piece of music. Yeah. So Goose bumps, that was your jam growing up? This is like instantly takes you back to your childhood.

Instantly takes me back. I watched so much goosebumps. I read the Goosebums book series by Arrell Stein. And I feel like it was like the Twilight Zone for being a child in the 90s. And it was scary. Some of those episodes were even to this day, I'm like, that was kind of a lot for children's television. So I know about goosebumps, but I've never seen it. I mean, I know it's like, I think it had a reboot.

I think there was a movie. There was a movie. I don't think I saw the movie. And really like epic, extremely state-of-the-art special effects. You know what? Yes. Yeah. Really state-of-the-art.

I mean, at least it wasn't all CGI. I can say that much. Well, I want to go next because I have something that also instantly takes me back to my childhood. And this actually isn't even a song, but it is synonymous with spooky season. to me. And there are people of a certain generation, I think, when they hear this, they'll instantly know what it is. You are a bold and courageous person, afraid of nothing. High on a hilltop near your home, there stands a dilapidated old mansion. Some say the place is haunted, but you don't believe in such myths. One dark and stormy night, a light appears in the topmost

window in the tower of the old house. You decide to investigate, and you never return. So this is from 1964. Okay. It's from an album, but it was played all through the 70s and 80s. It's the album. Played where? Okay, so this is an album from Disneyland Records called Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House. For people of a certain age, this was inescapable. It was a hallowing tradition. Any haunted house you went to, it was a plane. Any Halloween party you went to, it was plain. Or just trick-or-treating, you'd go to someone's house and invariably they'd have this plane on a record player on their front porch, or you could hear it coming from inside the house. I definitely heard this in passing on several different

front porches in Mentor, Ohio, and Iola, Wisconsin. Yeah. So the first half of the record, it's these little stories with that narrator. And every track is a new scenario, you know, But then the second half of the record is just the sound effects, you know, no narration or whatever. I feel inspired, honestly, to just start playing this in my home at all times. Like, I actually am like, oh, this would be great ambiance for like dinner parties when people come over. Yeah. Like, was it just brought out for trick-or-treaters? I mean, for the most part, but I had my own copy that I would just put on.

I mean, I was the same way with the Chipmunks Christmas. I mean, because, I mean, you know, Stephen, we do the goofy holiday show every year. That whole thing that we started more than a decade ago, that was my baby that I started just because I love all the sound effects and I love doing all the fully. You have always loved the sound effects records. So the chilling, thrilling sounds of the haunted house should I just keep this running underneath. Just keep it, just keep it. Everything.

Yeah, ambiently behind us. Stephen, you're nostalgic pick. First of all, when I was thinking back, like, what did I dress as for Halloween? I just, like, 10 seconds ago realized, of course, one year, I believe it was 1979, so I would have been seven. I dressed as Alice Cooper for Halloween. Brilliant. Because I was obsessed with Alice Cooper because he was so great on the Muppet Show. The first song that jumps immediately to mind for the Halloween canon is Welcome to My Nightmare.

I think you're going to like it. I think you're going to... You belong. For vacation. Unnecessary sedation. You want to feel at home because you belong. He's kind of giving Muppet. Yeah, I mean, he has Muppet.

He has Muppety entertainer energy. He's putting on a show. He needed to be in Dr. Teeth in The Electric Mayhem. And I mean, you know, Alice Cooper's music, like, as much as it was projecting as scary, you know, terrifying, theatrical, his head would get lopped off in every performance. Like, he himself is, like, a pretty G-rated guy. Yeah. And is definitely, and, like, is much more wholesome than you would expect, you know, from the music. You know, inside you feel right out here.

Welcome to my. Should be charting the way that Thriller does, or Ghostbusters, or somebody's watching. It is a great Halloween song. Well, the thing about this song that does stand out to me is I'm getting some Monster Mash vibes from it. Like, is there still room in the canon for kind of goofy Monster Mash level kind of songs like this if we're redefining the canon? I think so, because my issue with those songs isn't necessarily like I don't like them. It's that I'm tired of them. What do you think, Hazel?

Because my issue with it is that it is cornball. Like, I don't like, I don't want to watch the old Frankenstein movie. I want to watch a really scary movie. I mean, I think that this song, it's not giving the kind of cartoonish goofiness that Monster Mash gives me. Like, I think that there is a little edge to this song. But I mean, I don't know. I'm not getting that goofy, puppety, like, annoying.

I don't even really dislike the Monster Match that song that much. But, yeah, no, I think to Stevens' point, like I think Monster Mesh, it grates on us not just because of its goofiness, but because it is just, like, always there. Right. And I think that I have a little bit more leeway for goofiness in Halloween music or humor in Halloween music if it is new and a little bit fresher. Well, let's talk about new songs, because that's one of the things,

the categories. We did nostalgia. We did songs that are truly terrifying. Let's talk about some of the new stuff that's come out that we think belongs in the canon. Yeah, I was thinking about this compilation that was released by a artist I wasn't familiar with. Her name is Oksana Lind. She's like a Venezuelan composer and she mostly made stuff like from the late 80s to the mid-90s. And I want to play a song of hers called Horizontes Lechanos, which is a very, very, creepy track that reminds me a lot of John Carpenter's music and I was like, oh, this to me

feels like it could have been the score for a horror film and could be in the Halloween canon. Yeah, very John Carpenter. Like, I could hear this during a scene of like The Thing, that movie The Thing or one of his films.

So Oksana Linda is totally new to me too. You know, she, I guess, started recording as far back as the 1980s but didn't put out an album until just a few years ago. Yeah, it's crazy that we don't, like we haven't heard this before because it just feels so ethereal

and weird and, like, twisted. And I feel like you could play this music on the porch when the trick-or-treaters are coming up if you wanted to. Nobody would stop. They would just keep walking. Yeah, there's just such a sense of, like, dread to this song, kind of like the fever-goy song that we played earlier.

You know, just feeling like I'm being pulled into this other world and yeah. Yeah, I would add this to the canon. And Hazel, I think another thing that really stands out about this song and the Fever-Ray stuff is, are those analog scents? They're just so icy. So that's from an album that just came out this year called Travecius from Oksana Linda. Stephen, what do you got for something new to add to the canon?

Well, I think this song is pretty clearly engineered specifically to be part of the Halloween canon. And I happen to think it does a phenomenal job of it. Florence and the Machine, it is called, everybody scream. You know, I hadn't thought of it until hearing this song in the context of this conversation we're having, but this song has that borderline, goofy, super theatrical kind of melodrama to it, that I hadn't quite clocked until hearing it, like even the organ sound at the beginning, you know? I think the difference is she's committed.

Yeah. She gives a committed vocal, and I think they're, she's not coming in give there, like, I am here to suck your blood. She's like singing the hell out of it. Yeah. And like letting the instrumentation do the work of, you know, kind of the organs and it's spooky and it's a little silly. I get the sense that she is creating this themed, you know, fantasy and she is existing within it as the artist that she already is. Like this song, you know, with the organ, and, you know, it has these kind of like Halloween hallmarks and it's clearly pointed towards the holiday and has a purpose. It doesn't feel that out of line with her catalog or the work that she already makes as an artist.

Yeah, I mean, her music's always had drama and been very theatrical and kind of an undercurrent that's a little creepy. Well, and when we're talking about who is the Mariah Carey of Halloween, this is kind of. clearly a bid for that. And I would be remiss if I, if I failed to mention that Lady Gaga has a song called The Dead Dance, which has a video directed by Tim Burton, and she's like a creepy rag doll kind of twitching around to this very Halloween-coated song. So we'll add that one to the Halloween canon. Florence and the Machine, everybody scream for the something new category that we're adding to the canon. I'm going to pick a song by Ethel Cain. Yeah. A song called House of Psychotic Women from the sort of weird one-off album that Ethel Cane did

called Perverts. Perverts. Again, there's that contrast. Like, the music is so unnerving. And she's saying, I love you over and over again. So creepy. And all the words are kind of buried, like they're kind of coming up from underground or something. Yeah, Ethel is just such a master.

You know, she's so young, but she's such a master already in her career at this very kind of specific strain of American Gothic music in a way that I feel like so few artists make. she is just so good at creating these desolate, like, haunted houses of songs. Like, there's so much going on in there, even though it feels quite minimal. And, yeah, I mean, this is music that truly scares me, actually. You can't even make out what she's saying. So I had to read the lyrics. But she's talking about what I would call very dysfunctional kind of love, very broken. Just a messed up, distorted idea of what love is.

is or should be and she keeps repeating that line, I love you. But that's like another one of the forms that horror can take, right? We've talked about things that sound really pretty, but are truly terrifying or when you're afraid of your own thoughts. It's when something that you need and you normally trust, you can't even trust it. Like, you know, does that make sense like you trust love, you need love, you trust love, but in this case, it's paranoia. It's triggering all the worst impulses in you. Well, it's like I was talking about with Phoebe Bridgers with this kind of curdled intimacy being

an ingredient in a sound that can be really unnerving. So the song House of Psychotic Women with I think all the E's are missing from that and it's all one word.

House of Psychotic Women from perverts from Ethel Cane. I want to talk about songs that are seasonal. That's another category. Seasonal song. Songs that I mean they could be scary but they don't have to be.

But more than anything they, I think, just evoke this time of year. Yeah, I wanted to play a song that definitely not scary at all, quite cute, actually. It's Cardigan by Taylor Swift. Cardigan, it is cardigan season. It is cardigan season, for sure. No, I wanted to play a song that's fairly new, like in the last few years by the artist Girl in Red. It's a song titled, We Fell in Love in October.

I tell you what I like about this for a fall song I think of fall is the time to fall in love It's cuffing season That's thank you God, I was driving me crazy I was like it's it's uh What's that phrase? It's like snuggle, snuggle season or hooking up season? What is it?

Every season is okay cuffing season, yes It's it's a, I think of it as a time for falling in love and it's very sweet. Well, I'll say that falling in love is not the same thing as cuffing season. No. I don't know what I'm talking about. No, but I agree. I think that there is something cozy about fall, obviously, and you're sort of, you're moving indoors.

It's really easy to get isolated as the weather gets colder. So whether you're looking for love or you're looking for a cuffing season partner, like you are looking for intimacy and romance. And I think that this. song kind of captures that were sort of bundled up together. And, you know, the lyrics are so simple. It's really just like we fell in love in October and, you know, you could be my girl, but there's just something about this song that just, those lyrics just grow into this declaration, this really important declaration. And yeah, the song is like, you know, it feels

like wearing a soft sweater and cozying up to your crush with like a mug of tea in your hand. So Girl in Red, we fell in love in October, a single that they had out in 2018. Stephen, what's your pick for the season, the sound of this time of year? Well, a band I dearly, dearly love that put out a few amazing records about a decade ago. It's a band called Mimicking Birds. And they have a bunch of songs that evoke nature, a bunch of songs that evoke kind of a chill wind. The song that I picked from a record that I often trot out around autumn, is called bloodlines.

I will protect your shadow even though when it's dark as slips I'll clean your window make you look out and see scenery because I am a stranger should talk to myself in times of rearrangement or than good men to live outside

I'm not sure if you pick this song just because it makes you feel the way you like to feel this time of year. But this song actually is a little creepy too. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's got that whole, I'm a stranger. There's something kind of stalkery in it. You know, I'll clean your window, make you look out and see scenery. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that I really love about the sound of mimicking birds and just this sound that they're able to evoke,

there is this slippery quality to it. The sound is kind of slithering around, and it's unsettling, but also so beautiful at the same time. And then you catch words here and there about your family with all the evil in their bloodlines. Yeah. And their music is haunted in the best way. And so to me, they're a great Halloween band.

They're also just a great autumn band. They're a great, it's getting dark early band. Yeah, I feel like this is a good companion to, the girl in red song, like that sort of warm, familiar sound. But I think like that unsettling aspect, a lot of the music that we're talking about, and it's like successful Halloween qualities, I'm realizing it's very much like the trick-or-treat dynamic. It's like you don't know what you're going to get. Like, are you going to get something sweet? Are you going to get something sinister? And like music and culture that is in the center of those things where you really don't know

what's going to happen or maybe it's a little weird and it's a little fun is. just the spirit of Halloween. Well, it's also a lovely song, Mimicking Birds Bloodlines from the Eons album. Eons was the album that came out in 2014. I have one for the seasonal category that is so autumnal. It so evokes the season for me

that it kind of feels a little too obvious, but maybe not. Dance with the stars up above in your eyes A fantabulous night to make romance Need the cover of October skies You know the leaves on the trees are falling To the sound of the breezes that blow And I'm trying to please to the calling

Of your heart strings that play soft and low You know the night's magic It seemed to whisper and hush. You know, the song seems to shine. And your blush, can I? My love. Dance with you, love. It's a moon dance by Van Morrison, the title cut from his 1970 album.

I mean, the lyrics couldn't be more on the nose for evoking fall. He very specifically says it's October. The leaves are falling from the trees. The wind is blowing. There's a chill in the air. But it sounds to me like autumn feels to me, which is, this is my time to shine. It's when I finally relax. You know, there's a sense of relief in the air after a hot summer.

It's laid back. It settles into that groove. Everything is just right and perfect in the world. People you love, hanging out, having a good time. I don't know. There's an ease to it. And it's kind of similar to the girl in Red Cut in a way. Yeah.

It's very, very, very fall. It's very upbeat. But I will say there's another layer to this song here for me being associated with October and fitting into this episode because I also associate this song with an American werewolf in London. Yes. Because if you've seen that film, it's a comedy horror film. But the soundtrack is made up of songs about the moon. And this is one of those songs on it. So it's like it has this upbeat fall quality on its own.

but I also think of it in the like horror film music canon as well. Is that when you first heard it? Because that's when I first heard it. It was in that movie. I was in middle school. I feel like I heard it before that. But it's hard for me to like, so many of the songs on that soundtrack, I just, I think of the movie.

Yeah. I've had the same note about it being an American Werewolf in London. I was going to talk about the scene that it's in, but I went back to see what that scene was and we can't talk about it. I think I remember one scene I thought it was the scene where he's trying to kill time like he's just spending an afternoon by himself

and then he turns into a werewolf but that was Bad Moon Rising is the song they're playing in that scene. Anyway, Van Morrison Moon Dance from the album Moon Dance 1970. All right, we've got one more category to talk about and that is the Mount Rushmore of Halloween songs.

These are the songs that are so undeniable such classics that they belong on the Mount Rushmore of Halloween songs. So this song, total classic to me, I think should be on the Mount Rushmore of Halloween music.

I'm curious to know what you guys think. When I think scary Halloween music, I think the cramps. I think of that is a band that is basically like, they're given monsters. Every day is Halloween for them. And so I wanted to play their song, I was a teenage werewolf.

The slide of hand that this song pulls off is that it's got just a hint of camp to it. Yeah. But you could totally imagine this scoring a truly horrifying moment in a film or haunting your dreams. Yeah, it's like it's not Monster Mash. It's not thriller. It's like dialed down enough in that like campy, vampiric energy that it's cool. Like they are at the end of the day this punk rockabilly group.

There's a costuminess to it and there's like a goofiness to it, but it's not over the top. It's not party city. It's a more dialed down scream of Jay Hawkins. I put a spell on you, right? Like it's going hard instrumentally, but it's not shrieking at you. To me it's just, I don't know,

does this feel like a rush, I'm out Rushmore, Halloween, classic to you. I feel like it is to me. Absolutely. I wouldn't have thought of it, but hearing it now and hearing what you say about it, yeah, I could see this on the Mount Rushmore. But who is going next to the cramps, Stephen, on this Mount Rushmore of Halloween songs? Well, when we're talking about the Halloween canon and the songs and albums that kind of come back and chart every year, I'm always shocked that one of those isn't a duo from 2009.

called Dead Man's Bones. Dead Man's Bones was the duo of a guy named Zach Shields and a fella you might have heard of named Ryan Gosling. And a little someone you might have heard of. And feeling very Paul Harvey like, and that little boy whom nobody loved grew up to be Ryan Gosling. That was a terrible invitation. It was terrible.

That didn't sound anything like Paul Harvey at all. But basically, Dead Man's Bones, these two friends, one of whom happened to be Ryan Gosling, You know, they grew up obsessed with Halloween, grew up obsessed with haunted houses and the haunted mansion ride at Disneyland. And they made an album together in 2009, and they made a bunch of Halloween themed music, including this song, which belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Halloween music. It's called My Body's A Zombie for You. Yeah, and like, the flies in the sky, make it up to the end. Yeah, and like, it has an A-list superstar at the head.

But he wasn't at the time. He just was checking at his filmography. Like, he had done a handful of things. He had done the notebook. The notebook. The notebook. By that point, it was definitely. But he did, his career did not really take off until, like, 2010, 11, you know, when he did

drive and Blue Valentine's. But I think that this is like the right moment for this music to come back, Steve, and not just because Stomp Clap is kind of back, but also because like more people are aware of Ryan Gosling's, you know, musical abilities after Barbie and like La La Land. So it's like I don't know, maybe this is Dead Man's Bones return. It's Dead Man's Bones O'Clock. I mean, you...

That really rolled right off the tongue. It does. I mean, but like you look at like at the play count on Spotify and that song has, been played like eight million times. Wow. Yeah. So I realize now we've got a problem, which is... That I chose so well. I just, yeah, this show's done. No, I've got my pick for the Mount Rushmore of Halloween songs, but aren't there like four heads on the Mount Rushmore and we've done three? And the Halloween world, are there only three? The fourth head is of, is the severed head of Alice Cooper. Yeah, I'll take it. We can do that. Well, mine is one that could have. Well, mine is one that could have

gone in the nostalgia category as well. The Great Pumpkin waltz, Vince Goraldi from the Great Pumpkin. Classic. Absolute classic. Nothing scary about this song at all unless you're my children who, even now in their tween and teen years, can find something to be scared of in a curious George cartoon. But to me, this absolutely, this is the first head on the Mount Rushmore of Halloween music.

I think admittedly it's not quite the level of a Charlie Brown Christmas, maybe not that instantly recognizable, but no less a classic. Yeah, I grew up watching all of the peanuts, like the Christmas special, the Thanksgiving special, the Halloween special, had so much affinity for the Halloween special where I laugh every time, even to this day, when Charlie Brown's special. goes trick-or-treating and he gets a rock. I got a rock. I got a rock at every house and everyone else gets candy.

I'm not still like the funny. It's so twisted and sad. Why would you give him for rock? You just keep a bowl of rocks in case Charlie Brown shows. Every time. Yeah, no, I, this also could have gone in the nostalgia bracket for me because I just, I love this music so much. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, uh, since you identified with goosebumps at that time and

your life. I wondered if this was also, though, still a part of what you watched growing up. Yeah. Totally. So we'll go out on this then from Vince Giroli, the Great Pumpkin waltz from The Great Pumpkin. Stephen Thompson and Hazel Sills. Thanks so much to you both. Thank you. Thank you. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's All Songs Considered.