Spooky song review

‘Where did you sleep last night’ American Classics, Leadbelly
4/5
Ah, hauntingly beautiful. This song sounds like something you’d watch during a montage of someone slowly eating flesh at the start of a classic horror movie like Jeepers Creepers. Lyrics creepy themselves, you can hear this song’s age in the quality and texture of the recording which adds to its eeriness. Best played on a cassette player and listened to alone, late at night.

‘Lazarus’ Blackstar, David Bowie
5/5
The album Blackstar was released two days before he died, on January 10, 2016. This song is about the late David Bowie’s inedible death – Look Up Here, I’m In Heaven / I’ve got scars that can’t be seen. A song about your own death? Oh Bowie, you morbid bastard! The bass line alone is enough to keep you up, worrying at night. It pulls you in, slowly, and then leaves you trying to figure out exactly what you just felt (and why you want more).

‘Revolution 9’ The Beatles (White Album), The Beatles
2/5
The audio moves left to right in your headphones, and you can’t help but double-check behind you to make sure there’s no one breathing down your neck. This weird mixture of evil laughter, conversations, and noises from the human experience is unsettling and hard to listen to. Too distracting to be study music, not vocal enough to enjoy as a ‘normal’ song. Best enjoyed on LSD* – that’s how it was written, after all.

‘4th Dimension’ KIDS SEE GHOSTS, Kids See Ghosts
4/5
I feel like I’m listening to psychedelic pop. This intertextual masterwork’s mixture of samples, distorted laughter, and a beat that commands you to bop is sure to delight. Kanye West worked on this collaborative project, and the ghosts of ‘Stronger’ are hiding in the song’s beats somewhere.

‘Spooky, Scary Skeletons’ Halloween Howls: Fun, Andrew Gold
1/5
Seriously? This isn’t Play School, and this song died alongside the meme back when you were seventeen and one too many Smirnoff Double Blacks deep. It’s okay to play ironically at a party – when everyone is drunk, and the night is blurry – but someone is sure to skip it half-way through.