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. 

This summer when there wasn’t much to do and I had run out of my usual TV shows to watch due to production of series being shut down early due to COVID-19 and others not being able to go into production I caught up on a show I’d been meaning to watch for a little while – “What We Do in the Shadows,” an FX network vampire comedy based off the 2014 film of the same name. I binged seasons one and two and thoroughly enjoyed what I’ve found to be one of the most underrated shows on television.
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The show is hilarious as all hell, but another terrific thing about it is its theme song “You’re Dead.”

I figured the song was potentially written specifically for the show (or the movie, which I hadn’t seen yet when I began the show) but was blown away to find out “You’re Dead” is actually 54 years old!

Yes, it’s 54 years old, but I mistook it for something that may have been written in the last decade – that’s how fresh it sounds.

“You’re Dead” was by a folk singer named Norma Tanega, who didn’t really have all that much success. She never charted on the Billboard Hot 100 and only record two albums (her debut Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog in 1966, which kicks off with “You’re Dead,” and 1971’s I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile.

But listening to “You’re Dead” really entranced me when watching “What We Do in the Shadows” because it’s such a freakin’ perfect tune for a show, specifically a comedy, about vampires with its lyrics: “Don’t sing if you want to love long/They have no use for your song/You’re dead, you’re dead, you’re dead/You’re dead and outta this world.”

I suspect Tanega wasn’t writing and singing about vampires, but it fits perfectly, nonetheless.

Tanega died in January at age 80, just three months before the season two premiere of “What We Do in the Shadows.” 

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. 

We’ve had rock, pop, country, funk, soul, folk in our 31 Days of Halloween Hits playlist, so it’s about time we add some Hip-Hop to the fray – some old school Hip-Hop that is.

Before Will Smith became TV’s “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” in the early ‘90s he was a Hip-Hop star with his friend DJ Jazzy Jeff (who would have a recurring role on ‘Fresh Prince’). In August of 1988 in plenty of time to become a hit before Halloween of that year DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince released “A Nightmare on My Street,” off their second studio album He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper. It went to No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“A Nightmare on My Street” is a tribute to the hit 1984 Wes Craven-directed horror film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” that brought the psychopathic child killer Freddy Krueger into pop culture and led to a popular series of films.

The song tells of a group of friends watching the “A Nightmare on Elm Street” series with their girlfriends and then once The Fresh Prince falls asleep, he has his own encounter with the famous horror series villain. When his alarm clock goes off, he awakes to realize it was just a nightmare … until he sees his slashed bed sheets.

“A Nightmare on My Street” was actually considered for use in 1988’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master” before producers decided against it. The song actually got DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince sued by New Line Cinema, the copyright holders of the film franchise. Both sides would settle out of court, but a filmed music video for the song was forced to be destroyed (though a copy did somehow get out and can be found online). The record label was also forced to add a disclaimer sticker to He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper that said: “This song is not part of the soundtrack … and is not authorized, licensed or affiliated with the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ films.”

​On a side note:
Of all of these playlist songs we’ve been adding this month it’s DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s absolutely harmless “A Nightmare on My Street” that absolutely scared the every-loving bejeezus out of my Tree Walker Coonhound Bennie. Bennie has lived with me for almost a year now and I’ve never once seen him scared of anything. During the end of the song with the Freddy Krueger like voice comes on Bennie got up and ran frantically around my house before finding me and leaping into my arms. Who would’ve thought DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince could have that affect on a dog? 

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. 

OK, so it seems many of my favorite Halloween playlist songs revolve around psychopathic killers … so, of course, “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads is going to make the cut. It has to, right!?
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Led by frontman David Byrne’s unique vocals that really give “Psycho Killer” an unnerving feel, the song, off the band’s 1977 debut album Talking Heads: 77, was their third single but really the song that put them on the map and helped usher in New Wave music.

“Psycho Killer” is the inner-thoughts of a serial killer as he’s telling possible victims they better “run, run, run, run away” in a gleeful manner. The song was originally written and performed as a ballad, but the decision to turn it into this funky, New Wave sound with one of music’s all-time greatest basslines by Tina Weymouth really transformed it into one of the most influential tracks in pop music history, as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included it (and two other Talking Heads) songs on their list of the “500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.”

by Preston Tolliver
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. 

The entire discography of the Misfits during their 40-year run is a rhythmic death march through a haunted house full of monsters, mayhem, makeup and murder.
 
“Halloween” was released in 1981, the fifth single from the horror punk band (during the Glenn Danzig era). While it plays like an anthem to All Hallows’ Eve, and anyone who barely pays attention to Danzig’s lyrics might place it in the same category as “Monster Mash” - a fun, groovy dance tune to throw on at a party. But the lyrics, like most Misfits songs, are macabre; a horror story condensed into less than two minutes, complete with visuals of “burning bodies hang[ing] from poles.”
 
That’s mild, though, for a band that became known for love ballads about murder (some prefer the rage in Danzig’s era; I’ve always been a bigger fan of Michale Graves’ rockabilly approach toward horror - suggested listening for the next few days of October include albums American Psycho and Famous Monsters).
 
“Halloween” isn’t the best Misfits song, but it is plenty apt as we get ready to dress up and celebrate ghouls and ghosts. Moreover, it’s a sort of soft introduction into the fiendish and grotesque style on which the band would build its bloody, battered legacy.

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. 

The Beatles are arguably the greatest act in the history of music, but they also had some stuff that makes you go, “huh,” like “Octopus’s Garden” and “I’m the Walrus.” You knew if there was an aquatic being in the title of a Beatles song it was going to be a strange trip.
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One of the best “huh” moments from The Beatles was the incredibly creepy – mostly because the sound of the song is incredibly cheery – “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” off the classic 1969 album Abbey Road, about a murderous student named Maxwell Edison who goes around killing folks with his hammer.

Paul McCartney wrote “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” even though it was credited to [John] Lennon-McCartney as all of their solo writes were, and it was absolutely hated by the other three members of The Beatles. In a 2008 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Beatles drummer remembered the song as “the worst session ever” and “the worst track we ever had to record.”

If it were sung completely straight and not in this cheery, almost childlike manner it probably wouldn’t have stood out so much for me, but I quite like the track as it’s unique in its strangeness. A strangeness that make it perfect for your Halloween playlist. 

by Aprille Hanson
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. 

One of the cutest Halloween monsters is a rock and roll, one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple-people eating alien. Sheb Wooley’s 1958 novelty song “The Purple People Eater” was actually released in May of that year, but it fits perfectly into a Halloween playlist. The song, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Chart, was written in an hour, stemming from a joke Wooley heard from a friend’s child, according to TIME magazine.
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It makes sense because the song is equal parts absurd and adorable. It’s about an alien who descends to earth for two things — to eat purple people (a bit of a problem) and to join a rock and roll band, certainly more doable. 

The song is extremely catchy — I dare you to read lyrics to the chorus and not hear the tune in your head. According to songfacts.com, a speeded up recording made the squeaky Purple People Eater’s voice. It was the technique used in the “Witch Doctor” and “The Chipmunk Song,” both released the same year.

While artwork was created of the creature, primarily depicted as purple, there’s nothing in the song saying he’s purple.

It also became a 1988 Disney movie, with Neil Patrick Harris playing a young boy who befriends the alien. 

It’s such a fun throwback to the diner-style music of the ‘50s and one that’s perfect to rock out to at Halloween. 

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. 

One of the all-time greatest murder ballads is Bobby Darin’s take on “Mack the Knife,” which was a No. 1 hit in 1959 and won Record of the Year at the second ever Grammy Awards.
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The song tells the tale of a serial killer who kills people with a jackknife and originated from a 1928 German opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill called “The Threepenny Opera.” In the opera the character Mackie Messer was based off the character of MacHeath, the leader of a gang of robbers, in John Gay’s 1728 opera “The Beggar’s Opera.” So, “Mack the Knife” likely goes back way further than any other song on our Halloween playlist.

I’ve long thought the killer in “Mack the Knife” to be based on infamous and mysterious real-life serial killer Jack the Ripper of 1880s London, and some versions of the song may lean on that a bit more than others, but the inspiration seems to go back much further than that.

Despite “Mack the Knife” being a massive hit and an award-winner for Darin there were those who believed recording a song from an opera might harm his career. At the time Darin was more known as an early rock & roll artist with his biggest hit thus far being 1958’s top-five hit “Splish Splash,” but “Mack the Knife” would lead to a more lounge singer vibe with another smash hit “Beyond the Sea” coming in 1960.

Something about the suaveness of Darin’s vocal gives the ballad about a serial killer who’s knife cuts through flesh like the teeth of a shark an even more eerie feel.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Mack the Knife” as the 251st greatest song of all-time and pop music mogul and reality show judge Simon Cowell said on BBC Radio 4’s “Desert Island Discs” that “Mack the Knife” is the best song ever written.  

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. 

There’s a good chance you’ve never even heard the name Jace Everett. He’s never had a top 40 hit as an artist – though he did co-write Josh Turner’s 2005 smash No. 1 hit “Your Man” (so did current country star Chris Stapleton).
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But if you’re an avid TV viewer or really into vampires you’ve likely heard his song “Bad Things,” as it was chosen as the theme song for HBO’s sexy vampire drama “True Blood” in 2008, three years after failing to chart in the U.S. on the Billboard Hot Country chart. Though, I’ve never seen “True Blood” I imagine “Bad Things” to be the perfect theme for the show because of the sheer sexiness intertwined with a little dark romanticism of Everett’s vocal.

The success of the series led to Everett having some chart success overseas, with the song going all the way to No. 2 in Norway in 2009. “Bad Things” also won Best Scream Song of the Year at the 2009 Scream Awards dedicated to horror, sci-fi and fantasy genres in film and television.

Looking back I don’t know how I heard “Bad Things” when it came out in 2005 considering how little radio airplay it received, but I must have heard it once or twice on a local radio station and liked it enough to remain with me and eventually download it.

Everett’s suavity in his vocals, mixed with a rockabilly sound – especially with the track’s guitar – truly gives it a Chris Isaak vibe. The song is certainly a cousin to Isaak’s 1996 release “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing.”

by Julian Spivey
The legendary Tom Petty would’ve turned 70 years old on Tuesday, Oct. 20 and in celebration of Petty’s birthday his family and friends threw him a birthday bash streaming special that celebrated his life and highlighted his music for nearly three hours on Friday night (Oct. 23).
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The concert streamed on tompetty.com and Amazon Music’s Twitch channel and remains at both places if you missed it the first time around and are looking for a terrific celebration of Petty’s music (I’m not sure how long the birthday bash tribute will remain at either location).

More than 25 artists performed on the video streaming portion of the tribute, with many more having performed prior to that in an extended audio-only version that aired on Tom Petty’s SiriusXM station. The artists ranged from Petty’s friends and collaborators like Jackson Browne, Dave Stewart and Roger McGuinn to numerous artists influenced by his career like Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Gary Clark Jr., and many more.

One of the tribute’s highlights included Heartbreakers guitars Mike Campbell and pianist Benmont Tench wrapping up the show with a three-song performance, saying it’s the first time they’ve performed together in more than two years. Tench put a beautifully reserved piano-driven spin on my favorite Petty and the Heartbreakers song “American Girl,” that turned a guitar charging rock song into something you’d hear in a piano bar. Campbell took lead on the bluesy “Something Good Coming,” off the group’s 2010 release Mojo. The duo then ended the evening with a performance of “We What Boogie ‘Round Midnight,” a song Campbell said a performer from their hometown of Gainesville, Fla. would play to wrap up each night and then the next day when some socially-conscious performers would come back to clean up.

I had numerous favorite performances from the birthday bash tribute special, including Jackson Browne’s cover of “The Waiting,” Margo Price and Lukas Nelson duetting on “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” (which Petty and the Heartbreakers collaborated on with Stevie Nicks) and then Nelson performing “Southern Accents” and Price performing “Crawling Back to You,” which are two of my favorite non-single tracks from Petty.

I really enjoyed the Foo Fighters performance of “Honey Bee,” which clearly came from the Grammy’s MusicCares Person of the Year tribute from a few years ago as you could see a crowd of people in the audience. Gary Clark Jr.’s great performance of “Good Enough” came from that same evening. To my knowledge that show has never been aired anywhere in its entirety, which is a shame because I’d love to get a look at George Strait’s take on “You Wreck Me” and some of the evening’s other performances.

Among other performances I truly enjoyed from Friday’s stream were Stephen Still’s doing “I Won’t Back Down” with his son Christopher, Spoon’s cover of “Breakdown,” Brandi Carlile’s beautiful vocals on “Wildflowers” and Wesley Schultz of The Lumineers doing “Walls.” Lucinda Williams, who was the final opening artist for Petty’s final shows in 2017, did a rocking version of “Runnin’ Down a Dream.”

The worst performance of the evening was Beck doing “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” The performance itself likely wasn’t that bad, but the sound was, by far, the worst of the evening with bad acoustics and seemingly worse production that everything else from the evening.

One thing the evening reminds everybody of – though it’s not something one should have forgotten – is that Petty was simply one of the greatest songwriters of all-time.

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. 

The great Tom Petty would’ve turned 70 years old earlier this week. 
 
In honor of that I think we should add the eerie “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” his No. 13 hit from 1985, to our Halloween playlist. 
 
“Don’t Come Around Here No More,” the lead single off Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers 1985 album Southern Accents, isn’t really scary, but definitely one of the more creepy, eerie sounding songs in his discography and generally the least Heartbreaks sounding track of the bunch. 
 
It was certainly heavily influenced by its co-writer and producer Dave Stewart, of the Eurythmics, and May have sounded more common place on one of that group’s albums of the ‘80s. 
 
The idea came from something Stevie Nicks said following a romantic evening between Stewart and Nicks. Nicks had just broken up with Guitarist and Musician Joe Walsh before having a party in which Stewart attended. Stewart had fallen asleep and awoken to Nicks trying on Victorian clothing in a scene reminiscent of something out of Alice in Wonderland he told Howard Stern in an interview. Later that morning Walsh came around to find Stewart and Nicks together and Nicks yelled, “don’t come around here no more” at Walsh. 
 
The song was initially supposed to be recorded by Nicks, but upon hearing frequent collaborator Petty perform the vocals she didn’t feel she could do the songs justice. 
 
What’s truly creepy about “Don’t Come Around Here no More” - other than the excellent sitar playing - is the music video, which has an Alice in Wonderland theme and sees Petty dressed as the Mad Hatter with himself and the Heartbreaks eating Alice who has explicably turned into a cake ... it could also end up on your LSD playlist if you’re so inclined to make one.