With Halloween on its way, everyone is looking forward to getting into the fall spirit. What is a better way to celebrate the scariest month of the year than listening to some scarily good music? Or will the music be so bad that it gives us nightmares to the tune of the Monster Mash? Let’s give some of the most famous Halloween songs a listen…

• Ghostbusters

1. 1. 1. Milla – Starting off with a bang, the legendary, “who you gonna call?…Ghostbusters!” is now going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. A catchy tune from a fun movie, this song was the first song to appear in many of the Halloween playlists we looked up, including my own. However, the song does become annoying after you listen to it too many times. Despite how annoying it can be, this song is definitely a classic Halloween song. The sound effects make the song 10x more fun, however, the lack of differentiation in the lyrics is what I’ve chalked down to be the most annoying part of the song. Overall, I would give this song a 6.3/10.
      2. Wilson – For a long time my parentsand I watched movies after dinner, that tradition started with Ghostbusters. This song was much more interesting than I remember it being. The main chorus gets a little repetitive, but it keeps you engaged. I love looking at the ghost on the logo of the album, especially because there’s no ghost that looks that like that in the movie at all. It’s definitely one of the most iconic theme songs of all time. It’ll always hold a special place in my heart. I’m pretty sure we played this at a middle school band concert, so I would love to hear that version but I’m almost certain it’s been lost to the sands of time. 8.2/10.

• Calling All the Monsters

1. 1. 1. Milla – I genuinely believe this song deserves more recognition than it gets. It is a head banger with lots of autotune, but who cares. You can’t help but want to dance to its upbeat tempo. On the topic of dancing, I would like to discuss China Anne McClain’s dancing in this episode of Ant Farm. It reminded me a lot of a car dealership balloon. Nevertheless, the song itself is filled with multiple beat changes (unlike some of the JoJo Siwa songs we previously reviewed) and has “spookily-fun” lyrics. I suppose my initial statement of the song deserving more recognition needs to be modified, seeing as, in a shocking discovery, the song has over 46 million streams on Spotify. I really hope that this song becomes a Halloween classic, much like how the other songs in this review are. This song was tied with Rockwell’s Somebody’s Watching Me for my favorite from this list, but ultimately, I would rank this song a 9.4/10.
      2. Wilson – I loved Ant Farm as a kid.  Milla and I watched the whole episode this song is from in preparation for our article. This is a great standalone episode. Ant Farm is usually about a group of gifted students, but in this version all the students are monsters. Watching the theme song was extremely nostalgic, and then the episode quickly devolved into laugh track filled og-Disney Channel antics. The only weird part of the episode is that everyone in the episode called each other freaks, monsters, demons or creatures the entire time which gave the episode a weird vibe of discrimination. However, if I went to school with people that ate the entire basketball team, as one of the students did here, I would probably be afraid of them as well. The song starts right at the end of the episode kind of out of nowhere. The music video portion of the episode was probably conceived way before the episode. The song doesn’t really make sense in the context of the episode, but that’s fine. I was somewhat shocked to discover that this song had 46 million streams, but it’s a very Halloween song and it’s really not that bad. I think China Anne McClain should’ve had songs beyond all the Disney movies she’s in. 7.5/10.

• Thriller

1. 1. 1. Milla – Thriller is yet another song that is overplayed and becomes annoying after the first listen of the year. In addition, it would appear that I had blocked out the contents of the music video because, when rewatching it, I had no recollection of the extreme weirdness and confusion of its storyline. The video begins with Michael Jackson transforming into a werewolf, but then it is revealed that that part of the story was just a movie. Later, he is surrounded by zombies and then, suddenly, he is one. In this zombie scene, there is about 2 minutes (out of 15 minutes) of Michael Jackson just dancing, although it feels like 5 minutes. Suddenly, the girl Michael Jackson was with throughout this story wakes up and the very end of the video shows what is supposed to be “real life” Michael Jackson, winking at the camera with werewolf eyes. So what’s the reality of this story? Despite the hard to follow and oddly complex story, especially for a music video, I will give it some props for the special effects and makeup of the zombies. Which brings me back to the werewolf version of Michael Jackson. That was a very unpleasant sight for my eyes to see, yet they continuously circled back to that character, which prompted me to look up the storyline for this song. Apparently, it is meant to be a “coming of age” song. I don’t really understand how this song and music video are related to growing up and “coming of age”, but I digress. Despite my dislike for the video, the song itself is not terrible, in fact, I would rate the song itself a 6.4/10, but when considering the music video, the overall score would probably be a 4.6/10.
      2. Wilson – We watched the music video for this song and it was almost 15 minutes long and very confusing. I don’t really like the song that much and the video was incomprehensible. The narrative of the video was extremely difficult to follow and left me with more questions than answers. I like the aesthetic of many of the scenes but it quickly becomes too weird for me to watch. I didn’t like how it switched between the song and the story of the music video so often. I don’t understand why this is such a famous video. It’s just long. Just because it’s long doesn’t mean it’s good. The song is much better than most of Michael Jackson’s other music, but I wouldn’t put it on my playlist. The funniest part of this video is that Michael Jackson had to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the video to make it explicitly clear that he does NOT support the activities of the occult. The song by itself gets a 6.7/10 but with the video it gets a 3/10. 

• Monster Mash

1. 1. 1. Milla – For some reason, I can’t help but think of Scooby Doo whenever I hear this song. I enjoy the “eerie” sound of the voice. In contrast, the 50’s/60’s style harmony in the background adds an element of happiness and a desire to dance. Despite this song’s popularity during this month, I associate it with a kindergarten class Halloween party and don’t typically enjoy listening to it. There is an odd part of the song that sounds like a cacophony of random noises and is beyond unpleasant to hear. I don’t think that this song deserves as much popularity as it gets. Considering this, I would rank the song a 5.2/10.
      2. Wilson – This is a classic song to play on Halloween. I love this kind of music and it’s very reminiscent of the late 50s and early 60s. This is definitely music for an office halloween party. It’s kind of quaint. I don’t understand what the Monster Mash dance is. I would like this song more if it gave you instructions for doing the dance like the Cha Cha Slide. I found a video of the dance online but it was just too middle aged ladies in flare leggings waving their arms around, which didn’t help me get into the Halloween spirit. I think there needs to be an official Monster Mash dance. Anyways, the song itself is fine. I think it’s overplayed, but it does make one reminisce about elementary school halloween fiestas where everyone’s parents put dry ice in the punch bowl and 4 out of the 15 girls are dressed as Anna from Frozen. It’s fine but it gets annoying really quickly and it’s kind of depressing. (6.7/10)

• Somebody’s Watching Me

1. 1. Milla – I absolutely love the beginning of this song. I had never heard the entirety of the song because I would always cut it off at the beginning. However, I should have taken the time to listen to the whole thing. It’s different, fun, and maintains the element of “spookiness” without being annoying, unlike some of the other songs on this list. The clear element of the 80’s beat makes this song fun and nostalgic. We listened to both the regular and sped up versions of this song and I’ve got to say, I enjoyed the sped up version more. I found it to be more “spooky” and I felt more excited and “in the Halloween spirit” after listening to this version. Overall, I would give this song an 8.7/10.
   2. Wilson – This is probably the best song on this list. It’s very Halloweeny without being super annoying and aggressively seasonal. Also, its best quality may be that it is (not yet) overplayed. The sped up version of this song went viral on TikTok, so  Milla and I listened to that too. I have always thought that speeding up songs  sounds good when you don’t listen to them that hard, but when you really sonically analyze them it makes you giggle. Listening to the Alvin and the Chipmunk-esque voices always puts a smile on my face. I was really missing the thirst traps while I was listening. I think something about the 80s must have been really spooky to inspire all this Halloween music. Maybe it was the Cold War. I think the most likely possibility is probably “New Coke”. While we didn’t watch the music video for this song, as long as it doesn’t have 15 minutes of Michael Jackson trying to fight zombies I don’t think it would ruin the song for me. 8.93/10

Wilson’s final thoughts: Halloween music is a wide genre that is arbitrarily defined by the listener. There can be some great tunes but also some insufferable ones. At its worst, Halloween music is contained to a 2 day window at the end of October and is so overplayed that you can recite every word in the song backwards. At its best, it’s from Ant Farm. Halloween music seems to be most often characterized by its creepy and kooky lyrics, and spooky and ooky instrumentals. I think that because there’s so much less Halloween music than Christmas music, the time window in which someone can reasonably play Halloween music is much smaller than the holiday season. For Halloween music to be effective it can only be listened to the week preceding Halloween, and even that is pushing it. If you excessively listen to these songs then they will lose all their value and become overplayed meaningless series of noises.

Milla’s final thoughts: It appears that most Halloween songs have an 80’s style to them. They also lack a variety in lyrics, instead, there is a repetition of lyrics that are sung with weird background noises intended to add an element of the spooky season. Despite this, some of the songs are catchy and enjoyable to listen to. However, I would not be able to listen to these songs for the whole month of October, I don’t even think I could endure this music for a week, except maybe Calling All the Monsters. I think, after writing this article, I have fulfilled my Halloween-music-quota for the year.