THE GOTH HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST
Fifteen goth deep cuts for the night the veil gets thin, from Screamin' Jay Hawkins to Dead Can Dance, each with a little lore. No Monster Mash allowed.
Every Halloween party has the same soundtrack. "Thriller." "Monster Mash." "Ghostbusters." Somebody's cousin requests "Somebody's Watching Me," and suddenly it's 1984 at a roller rink in the suburbs.
Those songs are fine. They're the pumpkin spice of music. But some of us spent our teenage years in dark bedrooms with headphones on, reading liner notes like scripture, and we know that Halloween music is a whole genre that never made it onto the party mix.
So here it is. Fifteen tracks for the night the veil gets thin. Some you know. Some you'll pretend you knew. Each one comes with a piece of trivia, because a playlist without lore is just a list.
The Overture
The original goth was a Black R&B singer from Cleveland who rose out of a coffin on stage. DJ Alan Freed reportedly paid him to do it, and the stunt became his entire career. The famous recording session was so boozy that Jay later claimed he didn't remember making it. Start every Halloween here. It's the law.
A ghost song, sung from the point of view of a dead woman scratching at a window. Kate wrote it as a teenager after catching the last few minutes of a TV adaptation, and later discovered she shares a birthday with Emily Brontë. Fate has a sense of humor.
After fronting the 13th Floor Elevators and inventing a good chunk of psychedelic rock, Roky spent his later career writing songs about vampires, zombies, and demons with total sincerity. It's a Texas horror movie in four minutes. Hometown pride.
The Batcave
If you like your goth with glitter and ripped fishnets, thank Specimen. Frontman Olli Wisdom founded the Batcave, the London club night where goth got its look. Everyone was there. Everyone was wearing more eyeliner than you.
Born at the Batcave, where Nik Fiend worked, and they looked like a haunted house threw up on them, in the best possible way. Nik Fiend's makeup was a horror movie poster in itself. This one is pure dancefloor dread.
The band meant it as a self-parody of their goth reputation, and Nick Cave later wanted nothing to do with the genre. The goth clubs played it anyway. You cannot parody a scene that's already in on the joke.
The Shadow Side of Punk
Lux Interior and Poison Ivy were a married couple who fused rockabilly, B-movies, and pure filth into something called psychobilly. As the story goes, they met when Lux picked Ivy up hitchhiking. Romance is not dead. It's just undead.
While London had the Batcave, Los Angeles had deathrock, and Christian Death were its high priests. Rozz Williams was still a teenager when they made Only Theatre of Pain. It's raw, theatrical, and much darker than the LA sunshine had any right to produce.
Dave Vanian is said to have worked as a gravedigger before joining one of the first UK punk bands, then dressed like a Victorian vampire for the rest of his life. A man who knows his brand.
The Cathedral
That galloping, chiming guitar is John McGeoch, one of the most influential guitarists you've maybe never heard of. Johnny Marr and Jonny Greenwood have both cited him. Put it on and try not to run through a forest.
From Pornography, the album that nearly broke the band. Robert Smith has described those sessions as bleak, and you can hear every bit of it. Tribal drums, animals in the dark, total dread. Skip "Friday I'm in Love" this month.
Andrew Eldritch spent decades insisting the Sisters were not a goth band. He said it in a cloud of dry ice, in sunglasses, at night. We love a man in denial.
A Dutch band signed to 4AD, the British label that gave the 80s its most beautiful, haunted sound. Cold, shimmering, and perfect for 2am when the party thins out and the real conversations start.
End here. Lisa Gerrard sings in a language of her own invention, a glossolalia she's used since she was about 12, and somehow it sounds older than any language on earth. Turn the lights off. Light a candle. Let it ruin you a little.
WHY THIS MATTERS (A LITTLE)
We think the songs people play on Halloween say something about how we feel about the dark. The party hits treat it as a costume, something to laugh at and take off by midnight. These songs treat it as a place you might actually live, and find surprisingly beautiful.
Some of us never took the costume off. We just turned the music up.
Put this on while you carve, while you get ready, while you sit on the porch handing out candy to small vampires. And if anyone requests "Monster Mash," you know what to do. Release the bats.
SHOP THE SOUNDTRACK
Merch for people who still read the liner notes.
