Because I am a morbid ghoul, Halloween is my favorite holiday, so I put together a couple of Halloween playlists to share both the joy and the horror. The first is filled with compulsory Halloween spooky-hits designed to get all the boys and ghouls on the dance floor, like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition,” but I threw in some season-appropriate curveballs like Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby”—the best song about a ghost ever recorded.
Check it out:
Lifehacker’s killer Halloween party playlist
Table of Contents
Halloween party track list:
1. Stevie Wonder—“Superstition”
2. The Jackson 5—“The Boogie Man”
3. Rockwell—“Somebody’s Watching Me”
4. Billie Eilish—“bad guy”
5. Donovan—“Season of the Witch”
6. David Bowie—“Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)”
7. Kanye West, JAY-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, Bon Iver—“Monster”
8. Little Nell, Patricia Quinn, Richard O’Brien—“Time Warp”
9. Gnarls Barkley—“The Boogie Monster”
10. John Carpenter—“Halloween Theme”
11. Helen Reddy—“Angie Baby”
12. Rhianna—“Disturbia”
13. Sir Mix-A-Lot—“Monsta’ Mack”
14. Michael Jackson—“Thriller”
15. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince—“Nightmare on My Street”
16. Oingo Boingo—“Weird Science”
17. Bobby “Boris” Pickett—“Monster Mash”
18. Jeff Richmond, Tracey Morgan—“Werewolf Bar Mitvah”
19. Geto Boys—“Mind Playing Tricks on Me”
20. Outcast—“Dracula’s Wedding”
21. Ray Parker Jr.—“Ghost Busters”
22. Kim Petras—“There Will Be Blood”
23. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds—“Red Right Hand”
24. Post Malone, Ozzy Osbourne, Travis Scott—“Take What You Want”
Lifehacker’s actually scary Halloween playlist
If you’re like me and you consider Halloween amateur night because you live the darkness all year long, I’ve put together a second, decidedly more dreadful playlist. These songs will keep the dance floor vacant and have your guests staring into the middle distance, contemplating the common fate of kings and beggars.
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Actually scary music track-list
1. William Bolcom, John Murphy—“Graceful Ghost Rag”
2. Tom Waits—“What’s He Building in There?”
3. B.F. Shelton—“O Molly Dear”
4. Sinead O’Connor—“Jackie”
5. Rev. Gary Davis—“Death Don’t Have No Mercy”
6. Devendra Banhart—“Insect Eyes”
7. Violent Femmes—“Country Death Song”
8. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds—“The Curse of Milhaven”
9. Yma Sumac—“Sansa (Victory Song)“
10. The Louvin Brothers—“Knoxville Girl”
11. Throbbing Gristle—“Hamburger Lady”
12. Flanagan & Allen—“Run Rabbit Run”
13. Steroid Maximus—“Bad Day in Greenpoint”
14. Dock Boggs—“Oh Death”
15. Barbara Moncure—“A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go”
16. Pink Floyd—“Careful With That Axe, Eugene”
17. UNKLE, Tom Yorke—“Rabbit In Your Headlights”
18. Suicide—“Frankie Teardrop”
19. The Tinseltown Players—“There Was a Crooked Man”
20. Radiohead—“Fitter Happier”
21. Nico—“Roses in the Snow”
22. Nina Simone—“Pirate Jenny”
23. The Pogues—“Worms”
“I often heard sounds which filled me with an indefinable dread—the dread of vague wonder and brooding mystery. It was not that the sounds were hideous, for they were not; but that they held vibrations suggesting nothing on this globe of earth.”
—H.P. Lovecraft, “The Music of Erich Zann”