NPR Music - Redefining the Halloween canon

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

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 canon, from the truly terrifying to autumnal and nostalgic.Featured songs:1. Phoebe Bridgers: “Killer” from ‘Stranger in the Alps’2. Fever Ray: “If I Had A Heart,” from ‘Fever Ray’3. Sufjan Stevens: “John Wayne Gacy, Jr” from ‘Illinois’4. Jack Lenz: “Goosebumps” (theme from the TV show)5. Disneyland Records: “Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House”6. Alice Cooper: “Welcome to My Nightmare,” from ‘Welcome to My Nightmare’7. Oksana Linde: “Horizontes lejanos,” from ‘Travesias’8. Florence + the Machine: “Everybody Scream,” from ‘Everybody Scream’9. Ethel Cain: “Housofpsychoticwomn,” from ‘Perverts’10. girl in red: “We Fell In Love In October” (single)11. Mimicking Birds: “Bloodlines,” from ‘EONS’12. Van Morrison: “Moondance,” from ‘Moondance’13. The Cramps: “I Was A Teenage Werewolf,” from ‘Songs the Lord Taught Us’14. Dead Man’s Bones: “My Bodies a Zombie for You,” from ‘Dead Man’s Bones’15. Vince Guaraldi: “The Great Pumpkin Waltz,” from ‘The Great Pumpkin’Weekly reset: Chilling, thrilling sounds from the haunted houseEnjoy the show? Share it with a friend and leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] 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, but 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, do you scare the trick-or-treaters? Like, 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... You just disappear.

The town is, the town is like, we are losing our children. It's alarming. Everything, 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, 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 and live. last decade or so. It's the song Killer by Phoebe Bridgers. 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 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

intimate. This song felt true to that. It felt like 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. It 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. That is such a good pick.

Yeah. It is so unsettling. 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 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 rate 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. 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 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 used to be... There's too many spirit Halloween's. 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 folding John Wayne's t-shirts when the swing set in his first they adored for his humor and conversation look underneath the house

living things riding fast in their sleep all the dead head 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 Gacy Jr. by Sufion Stevens from his 2005 album, Illinois.

I think you could say, well, of course, this song is scary. He's talking about a serial killer. It's, you know, 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. 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. You know, of Christmas music and send it to his friends. He just needs to bump it up because he has other songs. His songs often invoke ghosts and killers. 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 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 play for this time of year. The silent night of Halloween. You can use that as a poll quote. I'm going to tell Asthmatic Kitty right now. That's yours. You're not a wrong thing.

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 please jingle bell rock? Is it home alone? No. You know what it is? It's mean girls. The end of mean girls.

Oh. 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. And so we watch it wildly inappropriate for a 10-year-old, by the way. I think so.

Yeah. Fun. All right, we will have your weekly reset at the end of the show. You might need it because you will be so terrified. By the time you get to the end of this episode, you'll need your weekly reset. Also, if you enjoy the program, the best thing you can do to sort of supported is tell a friend, share this show with somebody, and leave us a review on Apple Music or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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 Halloweens 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, GooseBumps, 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 GooseBump's book series by Arles Stein,

and I feel like it was, 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? I, yes, yeah, really state-of-the-art. I mean, at least it wasn't all C-GI. 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 Chill, thrilling sounds of the haunted house. For people of a certain age, this was inescapable. It was a Halloween tradition.

Any haunted house you went to, it was plain. Any Halloween party you went to, it was playing. 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. 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 Fortress? or treaters? I mean, for the most part, but I had my own copy that I would just put on. I just... 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 we started more than a decade ago, that was my baby that I started because just because I love all the sound effects and I love doing all the Foley. 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 ambiently behind us. I mean, that's why I do a weekly reset at the end of every show, is just to share some of the sounds I've recorded over the years. Stephen, you're a nostalgia 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.

for Halloween 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 guess you belong Serious sedation

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 shud. 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 as 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 of here. Welcome to. should be charting the way that Thriller does, or Ghostbusters or somebody's watching it. 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 Mash, 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 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 this year 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-Lijanos, which is a 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, you know, 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, the 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 in 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, there's a new album. coming out on Halloween, and the first single from it feels so Halloween friendly. It is called Everybody's Scream.

Get on the stay first name. I always meet her back at this place. She gives me everything. I feel no pain. I break down and get up and do it all. I'm enough. 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. She gives a committed vocal. And I think they're, she's not coming in good 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 clearly a bid for that. And I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Lady Gaga has a new 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. Brand new song for the something new category that we're adding to the canon.

I'm going to pick a song by Ethel Cain, a song called House of Psychotic Women from the sort of weird one-off album that Ethel Cain did at the top of the year. Perverts. called 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 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 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 Ethelcane, just came out at the top of this year.

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 a cuffing season. That's, thank you, God. I was driving me crazy. I was like, it's, it's, it's, like, snuggle season or hooking up season.

What is it? Cuffing season, yes. 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. In fact, it might be the opposite. Oh, okay. 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 coughing season partner, or like you are looking for intimacy and romance. And I think that this song kind of captures that we're 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 song. 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'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 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. You know the night's magic seemed to wait. You know, the soft moonlight seems to shine. And you're bluish. Dance with you, my love. Sub Moon Dance by Van Morrison, a 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. You're with 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 the 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 I, it's hard for me to like, so many of the songs on that soundtrack, I just, I think of the movie. Yeah, I, I 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 it was. 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.

They're giving, 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, Mount 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 Bodies a Zombie for You. You know, Stephen, we've been doing our look back at our number one songs from the past 25 years, and when we talked about 2009, we talked about it being the dawn of stomp, clap, and big group sing-alongs, and that you hear it in this song. Yeah, and, like, it has an A-list superstar at the head. But he wasn't at the time. 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. take off until like 2010-11, you know, when he did drive and Blue Ballet.

But I think that this is like the right moment for this music to come back, Stephen, 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, 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 began. 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 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 how. 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 goes trick-or-treating and he gets a rock. I got a rock. I got a rock at every house. Everyone else gets candy.

I'm not still like the funny. It's so twisted and sad. Why would you give them for rock? You just keep a bowl of rocks in case Charlie Brown. 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, since you identified with goosebumps at that time in your life, I wondered if this was also, though, still a part of what you watched growing up.

Totally. So we'll go out on this then from Vince Guraldi, the Great Pumpkin waltz from the Great Pumpkin. Stephen Thompson and Hazel Sills. Thanks so much to you both. Thank you. Thank you. And real quick, before we go,

I just want to give everyone a heads up on a new series starting in the All Songs Considered Feed this Thursday, October 23rd, is with Anne Powers and Dawood Tyler Amin. And it's all about old music, songs that have really stuck with us and why they've stood the test of time. The first episode is on Stevie Wonder's, I believe,

and we're going to have these every other week as a bonus episode for our NPR Music Plus subscribers. The first one is going to be available to everyone, and then it'll be for subscribers. So again, look for the first episode on Thursday. And for NPR Music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's All Songs Considered.