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by Julian Spivey As we welcome October with its cool breezes, and - now socially distanced - festivities, we often think of scary movies, pumpkin patches and killers in masks. Rarely, if ever, do you hear anyone say what they’re looking forward to most about the season, is the music. Granted, Halloween music has nowhere near the mega-market that Christmas music has, but it seems that quality trumps quantity in this particular situation. With songs like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” Halloween season is a heavy hitter when it comes to music! That’s why we’re celebrating 31 Days of Halloween Hits here at The Word for the entire month of October. Every day we’re going to bring you a great song that fits right in on your Halloween playlist. Some are songs specifically written for the holiday, but others are great selections you can listen to year-around but have a great theme for the spookiest of all holidays. Some of these songs you’ve certainly heard and some are lesser known that we hope to familiarize you with.  Photo: Columbia Records Gotta have more cowbell, baby! Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” has been an excellent song for Halloween playlists long before being featured in quite possibly the greatest “Saturday Night Live” sketch of all-time in 2000. The song off the group’s fourth studio album Agents of Fortune in 1976 has remained the rock band’s most famous and highest charting song topping out at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in late ’76 (how did 1981’s “Burnin’ for You” barely crack the Top 40?). “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” with lyrics that aren’t quite as scary as its title, deals with eternal love and the inevitability of death and was written and sung by Blue Öyster Cult’s lead guitarist Buck Dharma while picturing an early death for himself (there’s some creepiness for you – Dharma is still alive to this day though). The song, which Rolling Stone included as one of its Top 500 Songs of All-Time in a 2003 issue, references such tragic love stories as William Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet, which has led to some listeners over the years believing the song to be about a murder-suicide pact instead of eternal love as Dharma intended. The song also includes a line about “40,000 men and women every day,” which was Dharma’s guess at how many people on this planet die on average every day, but that number – according to a Boing Boing fact-checking mission of the song in 2014 is about 100,000 lower than actuality. One thing is for certain, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” is without a doubt one of the most unique and strangest love songs of all-time and mix in the band’s mysteriously creepy name it’s a good mood for Halloween. Get out your cowbell and bang along!
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