The five most insanely creepy classic rock songs
Rock and roll was never a genre meant to be all that glamorous.
There was definitely a fashionable side of the genre once people started to get used to it as an art form, but even at the height of the trendy side of rock, the ones who kept things interesting were the ones who didn’t cater to one specific type of song. There were certainly great pop songs written by The Beatles and The Stones, but artists like Black Sabbath wanted to take music in a different direction.
There were already countless people writing the traditional blues tune or tracks about being in love for the first time, but sometimes the songs that stick out are the ones that can be a little bit rough around the edges. From having the most insane lyrics of all time to the singer delivering the words in just the right way, it takes a certain kind of finesse for any artist to turn one of their best songs into something that unnerves people the minute they hear the first opening bars of the tune.
Even if the lyrics themselves aren’t all that dark, it can sometimes come from the backing track behind everything that sends everyone running away in fear. Not all of these songs were meant to be some of the greatest songs in the world by any stretch, but you can definitely see what the artist saw in them once they started playing. The hooks in the songs aren’t catchy, but you can feel the air change in the room every time they come on.
It’s not exactly the best feeling in the world, and fewer songs are able to bring a party to a stop quite like these, but being different like this isn’t exactly a bad thing, either. Most people don’t know what the hell they want until you give it to them, and even if they have to endure a few uncomfortable moments, it is always a trip seeing an artist in their element, making the most twisted song known to man.
Five insanely creepy classic rock songs:
‘Sex Type Thing’ – Stone Temple Pilots
The grunge scene didn’t need more reasons to hate Stone Temple Pilots circa 1992. They had already made one of the more flagrant ripoff albums in many people’s minds, and even if there were some great songs, no one was listening to ‘Plush’ without thinking Scott Weiland was doing a half-hearted Eddie Vedder impression. They may have become a far greater band later, but ‘Sex Type Thing’ seemed to be everything that the alternative culture didn’t stand for once the frontman started talking about a sexual predator.
The entire premise of a lot of the Seattle scene involved standing up for those who have been sexually abused, so hearing Weiland get into the mind of a predator and try to play that character was more than a little bit gross. Weiland did everything to stop the skid by wearing a dress onstage and saying he was playing a character, but it doesn’t come across in the presentation. Nirvana’s ‘Polly’ works because it’s so stark and bluntly honest, so it doesn’t work when there’s the same arena-rock styling backing behind you.
‘The End’ – The Doors
Everything that The Doors ever played was always meant to be a little bit dark. The hippie generation needed a lot more reminders that peace and love wasn’t everything, and Jim Morrison had his fair share of uneasy prose that he would spout out every single concert. But rarely does a song make people so uncomfortable that they take the microphone out of the singer’s hands and tell them to never come back.
But ‘The End’ really justified that kind of expulsion back in the day. This was the sound of someone losing their mind to a raga-style backing track, and while Morrison’s imagery is beautiful for what it is, it does get more than a little bit gross listening to him recreating Oedipus Rex and talking about wanting to do very nasty things with his mother. It was already too dark for the times, but now thanks to movies like Apocalypse Now, ‘The End’ is the sound of the Vietnam era of rock and roll losing its grip on reality.
‘The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me’ – Tom Waits
Almost every single song that Tom Waits ever made sounds like it’s coming out of a gloomy junkyard. While that’s 100% meant as a compliment, seeing him embracing his inner Captain Beefheart every now and again can be more than a little bit abrasive for someone that isn’t ready for it. He was never trying to make the kind of songs that Eagles did when they played their version of ‘Ol’ 55’, and by the time of Bone Machine, ‘The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me’ is about as strange as he would ever get.
There had already been pieces of his records that felt more like sound design than proper songs, but this freestyle piece of poetry is one of the most ominous tracks he’s ever made. It’s strange enough to make a song about a man wanting to walk himself into the ocean and never surface again, but the bar-dwelling night owl voice that Waits sings it with made the whole thing sound a lot more uneasy. This is practically the bizarro-world version of reality that we stepped into on this song, and listening to that voice, it’s no wonder Heath Ledger saw something in it for The Joker.
‘Frankie Teardrop’ – Suicide
No one picks a name like Suicide without expecting to be a little bit off the beaten track. The electronic duo was always pushing music forward back in the late 1970s, and despite their songs being a lot more creepy than others, there’s a reason why ‘Dream Baby Dream’ has lasted for as long as it has in underground circles. But when they told you a story, most people weren’t ready to be hit with a scenario straight out of a horror movie like what turned up on ‘Frankie Teardrop’.
There have been plenty of outlaw songs in country music, for instance, but hearing this tale of a man that goes insane and ends up killing his wife and child in a delirious episode is a harrowing trip to experience. Compared to all the other songs that deal with this kind of topic, the drum groove and the intense synthesisers put you in the mindset of that person, almost as if you have the blood on your hands for those few minutes trying to figure out what the hell you just did. Other songs might try to make something a bit strange, but this is the kind of music that takes you into a hellscape for a few minutes.
‘Black Sabbath’ – Black Sabbath
When Black Sabbath first burst onto the scene, the heaviest thing on the radio was probably standard blues rock. No one had heard the likes of Cream get that heavy, and even when they made their masterpieces, that was about as far as the charts were willing to go until Led Zeppelin came along. Since no one was going to hire another random blues band, though, Tony Iommi landed on the perfect sound when he started making music designed to frighten every audience they played to.
From the opening sounds of rainfall to the dreaded tritone that kicks everything off, ‘Black Sabbath’ is the centrepiece of what the band were all about. They wanted to sing about the deepest darkest corners of reality, and after reading about the occult, Geezer Butler’s lyrics about a ghostly figure that wanted to drag him to hell were enough to terrify even the concerned parents in the audience. This was practically taboo at the time, but since the rest of heavy metal followed suit, it turned out there was more than enough room for something sinister on the charts.
