Okay, maybe they're not the creepiest songs I've EVER heard...there's none of Diamanda Galas' work here...and there are probably creepier songs out there...but these are the creepiest songs I can think of at the moment. And they ARE creepy, that much I can guarantee.
"Frankie Teardrop" - Suicide...Well, with a name like Suicide what did you expect? This song is, IMO and without a doubt, the creepiest song ever recorded. Alan Vega and Martin Rev's 10+ minute epic is a minimalistic saga of a young man who, discouraged by his inability to make ends meet, decides to shoot his 6-month old baby, his wife and then himself, all the while Vega exhorting "Let's hear it for Frankie!". The gunshots are symbolized by hellish screams that will make you shudder. This is anything but normal entertainment, if it can be called entertainment at all. But it is an astonishing song, creepy though it may well be, and I like to listen to it a couple of times every few years.
"D.O.A." - Bloodrock...There is somewhat heated debate amongst Bloodrock fans as to whether the incident described in this song is a car wreck or a small airplane accident. I always leaned to the former, even though the lyrics do say "We were flying low and hit something in the air". I mean, to "fly low" could conceivably mean travelling at a high rate of speed, hitting a sharp incline and leaving the ground for a couple of seconds...I dunno, the airplane theory does make more sense, but I'll bet the song spooked more motorists than it did pilots. What makes it so creepy is the intricate detail with which the narrator describes his final moments, even to the point of the attendant saying there's no chance for him. He tells of how the sheets that cover his body are "red and moist" and how his girlfriend, sprawled out next to him in the morbid scene, "has such a distant stare". To top it all off, the end of each chorus is punctuated with the sounds of a real ambulance, which delighted me as a young child but freaked me out with paranoia when I grew older and became a stoner. Macabre stuff, people.
"I Love the Dead" - Alice Cooper...What a lovely subject for a song, I'm sure you'll all agree. NECROPHILIA! "What?" you say? Indeed, the Coop pulls out all the stops here, even topping some of his most creepy songs like "Dead Babies", "Sick Things" and "Killer". Not one to play at a dinner party, the opening lyrics proclaim, "I love the dead before they're cold, their rotting flesh for me to hold, cadaver eyes upon me see...nothing". It's a bold confession of passion...TO A DEAD BODY! Many is the time when I've sat up all hours of the night and wondered if, perhaps, maybe Alice took things too far with this one. I thought for sure this wouldn't be a topic he'd ever explore again, unsavoury as it is. Then, a few years later he put out a song called "Cold Ethyl", an upbeat ditty sporting the catchy phrase, "She's cool in bed, well she oughta be CUZ ETHEL'S DEAD!" Alice, oh, Alice...
"Message to Harry Manback" - Tool...Basically a recording of a telephone answering machine message from Satan. Okay, maybe it's not from Ole Slew Foot himself, but this guy may as well have been taking lessons from him. A menacing feller who has obviously been slighted in some way by Harry Manback. I'd hate to think Mr. Manback was recieving such threats and verbal abuse for nothing. Prime examples of the caller's hospitality: "You're gonna die of cancer, do you know that?" "Hope someone in your family dies soon, piece of shit, die!" It's not only his words that will creep you out (though that's all that is neccesary), it's the weird, unrecognizable, English-as-a-second language accent he's got going on. If this doesn't scare you at least a little bit, please stay away from me.
"Come to Daddy" - Aphex Twin...To get the full creepy effect of this song it helps to watch it's video accompaniment, which features a genuinely frightening alien blowing a thick foggy exhaling breath in a little old lady's face (among other bizarre images). Still, the song alone is weird enough to spook a man. Set to an incredibly frenetic bass and drums backdrop, a voice that sounds like it could only come from the throat of a demon makes a request: "I want your soul! I will eat your soul!" If a soul is capable of being eaten, this guy will no doubt munch on yours till you beg him to stop. More braindance ensues and next thing you know there's a twisted pervert beckoning, "Come to daddy...come to daddy...come to daddy..."...That's okay, dad, I think I'll stay right where I am, thank you.
"Death Disco" - Public Image Ltd....If memory serves, I recall hearing something along the lines that this song was written about the passing of John Lydon's mother, after a long illness, I believe that's how the story went. I don't know. Not that it really matters. The main "creepy factor" here is Lydon's voice, which sounds like a cross between a sneer and a particularly cathartic session of primal scream therapy. I can't understand a single word he says, except "Fire in your eyes". That's enough, Mr. Rotten, that is enough, indeed.
"Season of the Witch" - Vanilla Fudge...Donovan's original was sort of creepy, at least lyrically, what with all the hoo-hah about witchery and rubbing stitches in ditches and the like. But when Vanilla Fudge got hold of it...boy, oh boy, they redefined it as horror show madness. The Fudge's claim to fame was taking hit songs and re-arranging them into organ-heavy dirges with thick, vibrato buzzing vocals. They scored pretty big earlier with a version of "You Keep Me Hanging On" that sounded like the theme song from a vampire film. "Season of the Witch" shoots for a similar goal, but winds up authentically frightening, with crying men being tortured and a poem that sounds like the one at the end of "Nights in White Satin"...but where the Moody's come off like a Hallmark greeting card, this is more like one of Baudelairre's throwaways. And for all of that, it is a creepy endpiece to a creepy album ("Renaissance").
"The Rubber Room" - Porter Wagoner...This is not exactly what you'd expect from the guy whose biggest hit was "The Green Green Grass of Home". "The Rubber Room" is a surreal account of a psycho locked up in a mental institution. You never hear this kind of stuff in country music anymore, and that's too bad. Admittedly there is something distinctly laughable about this song. But once you've had your little chuckle and you start thinking about what the man is laying down here, I promise your shits 'n' grins will vanish in a heartbeat. If you have any sense in you, that is.
"The Eternal" - Joy Division...You'd think that a lot of Joy Division's songs would qualify as creepy, what with the aspect of hearing the last words of a man who hung himself. But surprisingly such is not the case. Ian Curtis was just a realist. Nothing too spooky about that, even coming from the grave. But "The Eternal" is the exception. Even without the lyrics the music of this song is haunting. When you add the words you've got a dirge that you don't want to listen to on a cold October night prowling around in a graveyard with a boombox in your hand or an iPod in yer ears. It's like the Grim Reaper busting out a song before swinging the scythe in your general direction. This ain't no death metal Grim Reaper, either. When the real deal decides to serenade you it's gonna sound like Swingin' Ian...a vaguely melodic death rattle uttering praise to the glory of loved ones now gone.
"What's Become of the Baby?" - The Grateful Dead...The baby? Which baby is that, Jerry? The one you abandoned earlier this morning so you could wait outside the Haight-Asbury laundromat and score some heroin? Now that you've got smack in your veins you come home to find that the baby is gone, and you have the audacity to ask what's become of it? Then, to make matters worse, you sit down with some kind of echoplex reverb stereo chorus gizmo and record this eerie glossolalia? I'll tell you what's become of the baby...CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES! That's what! And good for the baby, if you ask me.
"Frankie Teardrop" - Suicide...Well, with a name like Suicide what did you expect? This song is, IMO and without a doubt, the creepiest song ever recorded. Alan Vega and Martin Rev's 10+ minute epic is a minimalistic saga of a young man who, discouraged by his inability to make ends meet, decides to shoot his 6-month old baby, his wife and then himself, all the while Vega exhorting "Let's hear it for Frankie!". The gunshots are symbolized by hellish screams that will make you shudder. This is anything but normal entertainment, if it can be called entertainment at all. But it is an astonishing song, creepy though it may well be, and I like to listen to it a couple of times every few years.
"D.O.A." - Bloodrock...There is somewhat heated debate amongst Bloodrock fans as to whether the incident described in this song is a car wreck or a small airplane accident. I always leaned to the former, even though the lyrics do say "We were flying low and hit something in the air". I mean, to "fly low" could conceivably mean travelling at a high rate of speed, hitting a sharp incline and leaving the ground for a couple of seconds...I dunno, the airplane theory does make more sense, but I'll bet the song spooked more motorists than it did pilots. What makes it so creepy is the intricate detail with which the narrator describes his final moments, even to the point of the attendant saying there's no chance for him. He tells of how the sheets that cover his body are "red and moist" and how his girlfriend, sprawled out next to him in the morbid scene, "has such a distant stare". To top it all off, the end of each chorus is punctuated with the sounds of a real ambulance, which delighted me as a young child but freaked me out with paranoia when I grew older and became a stoner. Macabre stuff, people.
"I Love the Dead" - Alice Cooper...What a lovely subject for a song, I'm sure you'll all agree. NECROPHILIA! "What?" you say? Indeed, the Coop pulls out all the stops here, even topping some of his most creepy songs like "Dead Babies", "Sick Things" and "Killer". Not one to play at a dinner party, the opening lyrics proclaim, "I love the dead before they're cold, their rotting flesh for me to hold, cadaver eyes upon me see...nothing". It's a bold confession of passion...TO A DEAD BODY! Many is the time when I've sat up all hours of the night and wondered if, perhaps, maybe Alice took things too far with this one. I thought for sure this wouldn't be a topic he'd ever explore again, unsavoury as it is. Then, a few years later he put out a song called "Cold Ethyl", an upbeat ditty sporting the catchy phrase, "She's cool in bed, well she oughta be CUZ ETHEL'S DEAD!" Alice, oh, Alice...
"Message to Harry Manback" - Tool...Basically a recording of a telephone answering machine message from Satan. Okay, maybe it's not from Ole Slew Foot himself, but this guy may as well have been taking lessons from him. A menacing feller who has obviously been slighted in some way by Harry Manback. I'd hate to think Mr. Manback was recieving such threats and verbal abuse for nothing. Prime examples of the caller's hospitality: "You're gonna die of cancer, do you know that?" "Hope someone in your family dies soon, piece of shit, die!" It's not only his words that will creep you out (though that's all that is neccesary), it's the weird, unrecognizable, English-as-a-second language accent he's got going on. If this doesn't scare you at least a little bit, please stay away from me.
"Come to Daddy" - Aphex Twin...To get the full creepy effect of this song it helps to watch it's video accompaniment, which features a genuinely frightening alien blowing a thick foggy exhaling breath in a little old lady's face (among other bizarre images). Still, the song alone is weird enough to spook a man. Set to an incredibly frenetic bass and drums backdrop, a voice that sounds like it could only come from the throat of a demon makes a request: "I want your soul! I will eat your soul!" If a soul is capable of being eaten, this guy will no doubt munch on yours till you beg him to stop. More braindance ensues and next thing you know there's a twisted pervert beckoning, "Come to daddy...come to daddy...come to daddy..."...That's okay, dad, I think I'll stay right where I am, thank you.
"Death Disco" - Public Image Ltd....If memory serves, I recall hearing something along the lines that this song was written about the passing of John Lydon's mother, after a long illness, I believe that's how the story went. I don't know. Not that it really matters. The main "creepy factor" here is Lydon's voice, which sounds like a cross between a sneer and a particularly cathartic session of primal scream therapy. I can't understand a single word he says, except "Fire in your eyes". That's enough, Mr. Rotten, that is enough, indeed.
"Season of the Witch" - Vanilla Fudge...Donovan's original was sort of creepy, at least lyrically, what with all the hoo-hah about witchery and rubbing stitches in ditches and the like. But when Vanilla Fudge got hold of it...boy, oh boy, they redefined it as horror show madness. The Fudge's claim to fame was taking hit songs and re-arranging them into organ-heavy dirges with thick, vibrato buzzing vocals. They scored pretty big earlier with a version of "You Keep Me Hanging On" that sounded like the theme song from a vampire film. "Season of the Witch" shoots for a similar goal, but winds up authentically frightening, with crying men being tortured and a poem that sounds like the one at the end of "Nights in White Satin"...but where the Moody's come off like a Hallmark greeting card, this is more like one of Baudelairre's throwaways. And for all of that, it is a creepy endpiece to a creepy album ("Renaissance").
"The Rubber Room" - Porter Wagoner...This is not exactly what you'd expect from the guy whose biggest hit was "The Green Green Grass of Home". "The Rubber Room" is a surreal account of a psycho locked up in a mental institution. You never hear this kind of stuff in country music anymore, and that's too bad. Admittedly there is something distinctly laughable about this song. But once you've had your little chuckle and you start thinking about what the man is laying down here, I promise your shits 'n' grins will vanish in a heartbeat. If you have any sense in you, that is.
"The Eternal" - Joy Division...You'd think that a lot of Joy Division's songs would qualify as creepy, what with the aspect of hearing the last words of a man who hung himself. But surprisingly such is not the case. Ian Curtis was just a realist. Nothing too spooky about that, even coming from the grave. But "The Eternal" is the exception. Even without the lyrics the music of this song is haunting. When you add the words you've got a dirge that you don't want to listen to on a cold October night prowling around in a graveyard with a boombox in your hand or an iPod in yer ears. It's like the Grim Reaper busting out a song before swinging the scythe in your general direction. This ain't no death metal Grim Reaper, either. When the real deal decides to serenade you it's gonna sound like Swingin' Ian...a vaguely melodic death rattle uttering praise to the glory of loved ones now gone.
"What's Become of the Baby?" - The Grateful Dead...The baby? Which baby is that, Jerry? The one you abandoned earlier this morning so you could wait outside the Haight-Asbury laundromat and score some heroin? Now that you've got smack in your veins you come home to find that the baby is gone, and you have the audacity to ask what's become of it? Then, to make matters worse, you sit down with some kind of echoplex reverb stereo chorus gizmo and record this eerie glossolalia? I'll tell you what's become of the baby...CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES! That's what! And good for the baby, if you ask me.
2 comments:
Pretty creepy.
Oh... Joy Division. It now makes it clearer to me, Davey Havoks favorite band.
Davey. One man who is everything. His songs all manage to scare me or make me burst out imo tears. Try "Inception" by Son of Sam for a creepy song. Or that one Misfits song they covered on Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes, it goes something like "just so you know, I killed your baby" or something like that. also, try "the despair factor" and "affliction" by them.
As much as I love AFI, though, creepiest song award goes to Marylin Manson's "the beautiful people". No questions asked.
Still creepy-
Vermilion--Slipknot
Wrong--Depeche Mode
Post a Comment