Five genuinely scary songs
There are songs to make you happy, songs to make you sad, but what about songs to make you absolutely shit scared? Every now and then, a song will find its way onto shuffle and take you by surprise. Whether leaving you with a general sense of unease that makes any little creak or shadow terrifying, or whether it’s such an onslaught of horror that the silence after is a reprieve, these five songs are designed for a fright.
Sometimes, they come as a shock. Musicians can be sadistic beings sometimes as they hide moments of horrors amidst their album tracks. There are cases like The Beatles who love to make listeners jump with a little hidden detail right at the end of a song after a moment of silence, like the ending of ‘A Day In The Life’. Or there are artists who have always loved storytelling but then sometimes, without any warning, switch genres to horror as they tell harrowing or gruesome tales without any kind of precursor to emotionally prepare.
But in other instances, when listeners know what they’re getting themselves in for, scary songs can be oddly cathartic. Just like how some people find the jump scares and distress of a horror film to be oddly calming, adding as a kind of emotional reset button after a dose of adrenaline, songs can do the same. Especially with headphones on, music had the ability to get up close and personal with the senses and track straight to the imagination, whispering creepy little sounds into ears or unleashing a bombardment of fear-soaked sonic chaos.
Some artists can’t seem to get enough of it. Some bands and acts can’t resist making their songs a little scary and keeping their listeners in a fight-or-flight mode during their records. But there’s nothing scarier than when an artist or an album lulls you into a false sense of comfort or security and then suddenly makes you jump. These five songs do just that.
Five genuinely scary songs:
Suicide – ‘Frankie Teardrop’
In sonic build and lyrical content, ‘Frankie Teardrop’ keeps you on high alert. The song is built of nothing more than an unsettling rattle and a relentless beat that naturally picks up the pace of your heart rate. Then, when singer Alan Vega comes in, singing just slightly off time to the beat to add to that uncanny air, it grips you even tighter, carrying you deeper into this horrifying story as if you can’t hit the skip button and are already too scared to even dare.
At 10 minutes long, the song is a whole horror story. Frankie Teardrop is a husband and father, driven mad by his own poverty, who one-day snaps, murders his family and kills himself. But the song doesn’t stop there; it follows him into hell and drags the listener down there, too. It’s such a tense track that radio show The Best Show used to do a ‘Frankie Teardrop’ challenge, seeing how far into the track listeners could handle going before hitting stop, with few making it the full runtime. Because, the thing is, repeatedly and without warning, the sparse and relatively quiet track makes you jump as Vega lets out blood-curdling screams. We won’t tell you when it’s more fun to be surprised. Just make sure your headphone volume isn’t too loud, and the lights are on in your house…
Tom Waits – ‘What’s He Building?’
As Tom Waits’ career rolled on, he ditched the sweet piano ballads of his early work in favour of something more chaotic and more twisted. The narrative power of his lyrics remained, by the genre changed from romance or drama into horror as ‘What’s He Building?’ is a whole thriller movie in a song.
Looking through the window of a suspicious neighbour, Waits captures the energy of suspense. The song makes you feel like a horror film does in the first third because the frights start. But isn’t that the scariest bit? When you’re there, holding your breath, waiting for something to jump out or some kind of horrifying revelation to occur. Everyone knows that anticipation and the unknown are the foundation of creating fear, and Tom Waits puts that perfectly in music as he introduces this character amidst an industrial and uncanny instrumental that leaves listeners waiting for some kind of jump.
The Beatles – ‘Revolution 9’
Some songs are creepy because of their lyrical content; some are creepy because of the voice on the track. Or some, like ‘Revolution 9’ are creepy on every level, from the song’s build through to the chaos it caused in the real world after it’s release. On the most basic level, this White Album track is unsettling. Suddenly, The Beatles — the band the world knows and loves — are nowhere to be seen, and what’s left in their place is a spiral of field recordings and odd sounds that spin around headphones. The song bounces between ears, making you flinch and look over your shoulder as if something or someone is breathing down your neck or lurking around.
But then, history added a new level. In the 1960s, a man thought The Beatles were speaking to him, warning him about an upcoming race war. In each song, he thought he was hearing messages sending him out into the world to commit violence, and when he did, his followers sprawled ‘Helter Skelter’ on the walls in blood. There’s something about knowing Charles Manson’s connection to the record and the fact that he thought ‘Revolution 9’ was the key to his whole murderous mind that makes the track not just unsettling but harrowing.
Scott Walker – ‘The Cockfighter’
Scott Walker, similar to Tom Waits, is another artist who cast off the sweetness of his early career to descend into dark chaos. Originally a member of the 1960s pop group The Walker Brothers, they were busy singing harmless tunes about love and lust. Then, in his solo work, things started getting weirder and weirder, shifting from odd storytelling songs into chilling, avant-garde pieces that linger in the atmosphere of horror.
‘The Cockfighter’ is a prime example. Beginning as a whisper of creepy little creeks and rattles and a moaning voice in the background, prepare to jump out of your skin. From that moment on, it throws you back and forth between suspenseful fear and a sensory onslaught where silence is no comfort and volume is an attack.
Ethel Cain – ‘Ptolemaea’
The first time anyone listens to Preacher’s Daughter, Ethel Cain’s incredible debut album telling the horrifying tale of the character that gives the artist her name, the second half comes with a fright. After the anthemic opening tracks like ‘American Teenager’ and ‘A House In Nebraska’, the fate of Ethel Cain gets dark as she runs away from home and is abused by the man who was supposed to save her. In this scene, as ‘Ptolemaea’ begins, she’s drugged and tripping as her abuser attacks her. But more than just a tale of violence, the title refers to the deepest circle of hell in Dante’s Inferno, and the song drags you there.
A creepy, discordant moan continues through the track as if a demon is breathing heavily in your ear. On top of that, an even creepier voice, almost like a devil, begins a monologe with “I followed you in” which is enough to have you on edge. But as those two things are then met with Cain’s voice, as the character begs and pleads for her life, the fear hits a new high as her desperate repetition of “stop” concludes with a blood-curdling scream. Then, as the raging rock instrumental of the attack is over, the song stays in hell as a haunting sermon is read aloud like a cherry on top of a nightmare.
