The Best Halloween Songs
Sequence this the way you would really play it, and vote down anything you would skip. The scope rule is narrow: a song qualifies if its lyrics are about monsters, ghosts, witches, the dead or being hunted by them, or if it was written for a horror film, stage musical or Halloween property. It cuts Somebody's Watching Me, Disturbia and Highway to Hell, all of which sit high on other people's lists, because paranoia and hell-as-swagger are not monsters, and none was written for a horror property. Ordering runs in two tiers. Songs that a 2022 study of 226 Spotify Halloween playlists measures come first, in that study's order. Below them sit songs SiriusXM's 2024 ranked Halloween list names and the playlist study misses, in SiriusXM's order. Sources disagree sharply: Billboard puts Thriller 22nd on Hot 100 performance, and NPR ran a rebuttal against that placement. Every link goes to the recording the song is known by, the original studio release or a film soundtrack recording. No covers, no remixes, no later re-records.
Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers — Monster Mash (1962) is #1 on “The Best Halloween Songs”.
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Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers — Monster Mash (1962)
Monster Mash is a novelty record built on a Boris Karloff impression, and it has outlasted almost everything that sounded cooler in 1962. The joke is that a graveyard smash is a dance craze, which dates the song precisely and somehow keeps it alive. It finished first in that study. This is the Crypt-Kickers original, not the later re-record.
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Michael Jackson — Thriller (1982)
Thriller earns its standing on a fourteen-minute video that taught a generation what a music video could cost. The record underneath is a funk track with Vincent Price talking over the fade. Second in the playlist study, while Billboard's chart method puts it 22nd, which tells you more about the method than about the song. The link goes to the 1982 album cut, not a compilation copy.
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The Citizens of Halloween — This Is Halloween (1993)
Danny Elfman wrote This Is Halloween as an introduction to a town where every resident is a monster, and it plays as a roll call of them: the clown with the tear-away face, the thing under the stairs. It sits third in the playlist study and has become the default opening track for a certain kind of party. This is the 1993 soundtrack recording, not the 2006 repackage.
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Little Nell, Patricia Quinn & Richard O'Brien — Time Warp (1975)
Time Warp is a set of dance instructions disguised as a song, which is why it survives outside the film that produced it. Rocky Horror audiences have been jumping to the left since 1975, and the study has it fourth. This comes off the 1975 film album, with Richard O'Brien, Patricia Quinn and Little Nell reprising the roles they had played on stage.
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Andrew Gold — Spooky, Scary Skeletons (1996)
Andrew Gold recorded Spooky, Scary Skeletons for a children's Halloween album in 1996, where it sat quietly until the internet found it. A remix turned it into a meme, and the meme sent people back to the original, eighth across those 226 playlists. The version linked here is that 1996 recording from Halloween Howls, not the Undead Tombstone remix that did the streaming numbers.
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John Carpenter — Halloween Theme - Main Title (1978)
John Carpenter wrote the Halloween Theme himself, in 5/4, on a budget that ruled out hiring an orchestra. It is two hands and a synthesizer, ninth in the same study, and it still empties a room. No lyrics, so it qualifies on the other clause: written for a horror film. The 1978 recording, reissued in 2010; the 2017 re-performance is a different record.
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Blue Öyster Cult — (Don't Fear) The Reaper (1976)
Blue Öyster Cult sent the Reaper himself to the door, which is what puts the song inside the scope rule instead of beside it. Listeners have heard it as a suicide note and as a cowbell punchline since. Carpenter later used it in the first Halloween. The playlist study places it tenth. Agents of Fortune supplies the album cut: not the live take, the single edit or the 1975 demo.
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Oingo Boingo — Dead Man's Party (1985)
Oingo Boingo built Dead Man's Party on a horn section and a narrator invited somewhere he is already too late for. Danny Elfman again, eight years before he scored Nightmare Before Christmas. The horns are why it survives at actual parties and not only on playlists, where that study counts it thirteenth. The 1985 studio cut, not the 1988 live re-record.
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Ray Parker Jr. — Ghostbusters (1984)
Ray Parker Jr. had days rather than weeks to write Ghostbusters and produced a song that is mostly a phone number and a question. The playlist study ranks it nineteenth, which is why it sits at the bottom of the measured tier. From the 1984 soundtrack.
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Ozzy Osbourne — Bark at the Moon (1983)
Ozzy Osbourne's Bark at the Moon tells a werewolf story at speed, with Jake E. Lee's riff doing most of the narrative work. SiriusXM ranks it ninth; the playlist study does not reach it at all, which is how metal usually fares at Halloween. Sourced from the 1983 album, a CD-era master carrying two bonus cuts after the running order.
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Warren Zevon — Werewolves of London (1978)
Warren Zevon wrote Werewolves of London as a throwaway and spent the rest of his career being played for it. SiriusXM has it thirteenth. The piano figure is the hook. The lyric is a werewolf ordering beef chow mein at Lee Ho Fook's with perfect hair. Taken from Excitable Boy, not the alternate version sitting on the same reissue.
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Screamin' Jay Hawkins — I Put a Spell on You (1958)
Screamin' Jay Hawkins sits seventeenth on SiriusXM and in the second tier only because the playlist study cannot see him. I Put a Spell on You never charted on Billboard's pop or R&B charts, so a chart-based ranking loses it entirely, and NPR singled it out as the omission that mattered. Nina Simone and Creedence both took it somewhere else. This is Hawkins' own recording, the 1958 Epic album issue.
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Ramones — Pet Sematary (1989)
The Ramones cut Pet Sematary for the 1989 Stephen King adaptation, so it enters on the film clause and not on any monster of its own. SiriusXM ranks it eighteenth. It is a straight pop-punk song about not wanting to be buried, played without a wink. The album version off Brain Drain, not the single or the 1999 remaster.
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