31 Days of Halloween Hits: "The Rubber Room" by Porter Wagoner

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: Omni Records

It’s the ghosts and ghouls and witches and werewolves that we absolutely love about Halloween, but sometimes the scariest stuff in the real world are things many of us struggle through in life – the thoughts and worries that live inside our minds.
​
Country Music Hall of Famer Porter Wagoner delved into the dark recesses of one’s mind in his 1972 song “The Rubber Room,” which is one of the strangest country songs I’ve ever heard.

While it’s not typical of the country genre to go deep into one’s head, what truly makes “The Rubber Room” strange and eerie and perfect for a Halloween playlist is it’s echo-heavy sound that really gives off the feeling of one losing their mind inside a psychiatric hospital in a room with walls padded with rubber so one doesn’t hurt themselves slamming up against it.

It’s a feeling Wagoner must have known well when he wrote the song as he spent some time in a mental health institution in Nashville.

Wagoner was no stranger to songs with dark themes, recording hit songs about death row inmates waiting to be executed, murder ballads and deathly car accidents. Some of these dark themed songs were put into a compilation by the Australian record company Omni Records some 15 or so years ago that shared its name with this truly creepy song.

---