Unlike Christmas music, which almost always directly concerns the holiday in question and often mentions it by name, Halloween music tends to be a broader category. Songs that directly mention Halloween are few and far between (though they do exist!), but there is certainly no shortage of songs that concern monsters, violence, and other macabre themes associated with this spookiest of holidays. How well do you know your Halloween-coded hits? Test your knowledge with this quiz!
How well did you do? Are you prepared to create the playlist for this year’s Halloween party, or is it time to brush up on tunes about psycho killers, werewolves, and magic spells?
Classic Halloween jams
The oldest song featured in this quiz is “The Purple People Eater,” which was released in 1958. The song came from a joke told by a friend of writer and performer Sheb Wooley: “What has one eye, one horn, flies and eats people? A one-eyed, one-horned, flying people eater!” Wooley wrote the track in an hour and later called it “undoubtedly the worst song he had ever written.” But it became a hit with young people at New York’s MGM Records, made it to No. 18 on the Billboard R&B Best Sellers in Stores chart, and remains a classic Halloween staple today.
As previously mentioned, most songs associated with Halloween can also be played year-round—depending on your tastes, of course. But there are a few tunes that have become deeply tied to October 31. One such song also happens to be another oldie featured in this quiz: “The Monster Mash,” the 1962 hit by Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt Kickers.
This track, which may be the ultimate Halloween anthem, began when singer Bobby Pickett started imitating horror-movie actor Boris Karloff during band rehearsals. That monologue blossomed into the miraculous “Monster Mash,” and the song has remained in rotation pretty much every Halloween since.
Rock’s occult period
Many of the songs featured in this quiz have less to do with Halloween and more to do with rock and roll’s romance with all things satanic and monstrous. Occult-themed rock and roll was popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and this helped spark the Satanic Panic of the ‘80s—naturally leading more rock bands to embrace these themes in an act of rebellion.
Some rock bands really did practice Satanism and witchcraft, while others merely drew on occult imagery for shock value. Regardless, this phenomenon led to the creation of iconic songs like The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil” and Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave.”
Modern Halloween hits
21st-century Halloween-themed hits seem to be fewer and farther between than in the century before; only a few are featured in this quiz. One of them is Shakira’s “She Wolf,” which puts a more empowering spin on the old werewolf theme, using the “she-wolf” as a metaphor for a wild side unleashed. Still, it appears likely that the 21st century’s greatest Halloween hits are ahead of us.