It's that time of year again and, may we say, Halloween just isn't Halloween without a decent soundtrack to go with it. But what to choose?
Here is our top ten list of ghoulish, ghostly and downright terrifying songs, plucked from all corners of the musical canon. Get these best Halloween songs on your playlists now.
Best Halloween songs: from Mozart to Ghostbusters
1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Commendatore scene from Don Giovanni
‘Don Giovaaaaaaaaaaani’, bellows the Commendatore, as he prepares to drag Mozart’s hapless lothario down to the depths of hell at Don Giovanni's dark climax. It's a great moment, particularly when delivered with a certain degree of camp. One of opera's greatest enactments of the supernatural (and there are lots), it’s up there with Dracula for sheer spooks, unleashing many an opera director’s gothic instincts over the years. Case in point, see below:
2. Giuseppe Verdi: 'Dies Irae' from the Requiem
Classical music does not get much scarier than this depiction of Judgement Day from Verdi’s Requiem. With its four stabs from the orchestra, followed by that immense crescendo and finally that banshee soprano wail, the ‘Dies Irae’ has one of the most recognisable introductions in the musical canon, epitomising the wrath of God. Try turning out all the lights and playing this at full blast; the trick-or-treaters will love it.
3. Andrew Lloyd Webber: Phantom of the Opera Overture
Talking about high camp and gothic instincts, I’ve got five words for you: The Phantom of the Opera. Yes! Love or hate it, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 classic musical certainly scratches a very particular kind of itch, and this opening number, with that famous, shameless chromatic scale on the organ, is one of its most flamboyant offerings.
- Andrew Lloyd Webber: his greatest musicals
4. Ray Parker: Ghostbusters theme song
If you want more of an 80’s Halloween vibe, then this little chestnut is just what you’re after. That said, Ray Parker's 1984 song to the film of the same name had a bit of comeback this side of the millennium, reentering the UK Top 75 in 2008, and then again in 2021. By now, of course, everyone knows the answer to that timeless question: ‘Who you gonna call?’ Still, this iconic song never gets old.
5. Victor Mizzy: The Addams Family theme song
‘They’re creepy and they’re kooky/ Mysterious and spooky…’ and so was this song, written by the New York-born TV and film composer Victor Mizzy. With its frequent finger clicks, and repeated figure on the harpsichord, it remains one of the most distinctive and memorable TV theme songs, even now, 60-odd years after it was composed.
More best Halloween songs
6. Louis Armstrong: Skeleton in the Closet
This 1936 song is actually pretty profound, delving into themes of secrecy, the anxiety of keeping truths hidden, and the toll it takes on us. You could even interpret it as autobiographical, possibly referencing the societal pressures of the Great Depression.
In another sense, though, it’s perfect Halloween fodder, thanks to its creepy concoction of melody and lyrics: ‘Don’t you know that house is haunted?There’s an old deserted mansion on an old forgotten road/Where the better ghosts and goblins always hang out…’
7.Ella Fitzgerald: 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead'
This song, in which the munchkins celebrate the demise of the Wicked Witch of the East, was straightforwardly jolly when it first appeared in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. However, Ella Fitzgerald’s cover turned it into something else: not spooky exactly, but certainly unsettling thanks to those slippery jazz harmonies and Fitzgerald’s inimitably bluesy voice.
8. English traditional: 'The Unquiet Grave'
This English folk song describes a young man whose grief over the death of his true love is so deep that it disturbs her eternal sleep. When she complains that his weeping is keeping her from peaceful rest, he begs for a kiss. She replies that it would kill him, whereupon he begs to join her in death.
Pretty ghoulish stuff, eh? And the melody is suitably cheerless, particularly in the bass-heavy version below, complete with sounds of thunder and pouring rain.
9. Carl Orff: 'O Fortuna' from Carmina Burana
When Carl Orff wrote Carmina Burana, his epic 1934 work based on the Medieval collection of satirical poems and dramatic texts of the same name, his intention was to blur the boundaries between music, movement and speech.
The result was something extraordinarily intense, and ‘O Fortuna’, which begins the work’s opening and closing sections, is perhaps its most visceral offering, railing against the goddess of fortune and humanity’s lack of control over its own destiny. With its whispering choir, set against a steady crescendo of thumping drums, it is pretty terrifying, particularly as it approaches its almighty climax.
And one of the best Halloween songs of all...
10.Benjamin Britten: 'Malo' from The Turn of the Screw
Few classical composers did ‘creepy’ quite like Benjamin Britten, and in The Turn of the Screw, his 1954 opera, based on Henry James’s 1898 ghost story novella, he excels himself. It tells of a young, inexperienced governess who, charged with caring for two children, Miles and Flora, at a grand country house, becomes convinced that the grounds are haunted.
What ensues is a labyrinthine plot, that raises many more questions than it answers. Sung by Miles, during a Latin lesson, ‘Malo’ is one of the most unsettling moments in the whole opera: a trance-like aria that plays on the dual significance of the word: ‘malo’ as in 'bad' vs ‘malo’ as in the first-person singular of the verb 'malle’, meaning ’to prefer’. Is Miles innocent, or wicked, possessed or just mischievous? We’ll never know for sure, and the music remains all the more chilling for it.
