Halloween Rock Songs

Marilyn Manson, who seems to wear his Halloween costume all year long, adds his theatrically goth-punk, yet twisted vocals to Danny Elfman's This Is Halloween from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack.

Like Burton's collaborations with Johnny Depp, Manson hooking up with the master of the dark and quirky is a marraige made in heaven...or should that be hell?

I Want Candy was originally an American hit by The Strangeloves back in 1965, but this is probably the version that most people in the UK are more familiar with.

Controversial band Bow Wow Wow put their own spin on the song in 1982, and it has since become something of a New Wave classic. The theme tune for trick or treaters at Halloween, the subject matter of the track may be about something altogether different!

One of the UK's most successful and enduring New Wave and punk rock bands is The Stranglers - even their name evokes great Halloween branding.

They started out in my part of the UK - Guildford in Surrey - and soon found themselves on the UK charts with songs such as Peaches, Golden Brown and No More Heroes.

Now, have clowns ever spooked you out? Then you might not want to listen to Waltzinblack with the lights out. This distinctive instrumental with its progressively macabre overtones is an ideal Halloween filler, which The Stranglers use as an atmospheric overture to their live performances.

From clowns to man's innate fear of spiders and Robert Smith's The Cure do it exceptionally well, with both the video to their hit song Lullaby and its lyrics.

Those haunting lyrics include lines like Stealing past the windows of the blissfully dead, looking for the victim shivering in bed and For it's much too late to get away or turn on the light, the spiderman is having you for dinner tonight. This is not the kind of lullaby you might be used to. Sleep tight!

Purveyors of a combination of art rock and punk rock Siouxsie and the Banshees became one of the most successful alternate British bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The track Halloween comes from their much lauded and typically brooding and darkly magical 1981 album, Juju - one which The Guardian newspaper recommends as one of their 1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die.

Never a mainstream band, The Cramps nevertheless built up a huge cult following for their fusion of rockabilly and punk rock.

Always with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks, The Cramps obsession with 1950s-style horror and sci-fi B-movies produced titles like Bikini Girls With Machine Guns, The Creature From the Black Leather Lagoon, Big Black Witchcraft Rock, and this one, I Was A Teenage Werewolf.

Continuing with the werewolf theme, this is probably the most successful recording of Warren Zevon's career, reaching the US Top 30 in 1978 - Werewolves of London.

It tells the tale of a well-dressed werewolf who slaughters old ladies and who strolls with the Queen, all the while having a penchant for Chinese food. Bizarre, but you won't get its trademark Awoooo!! out of your head.

Blue Oyster Cult's guitar driven music has always been an obvious marriage with the theme of Halloween. Probably best known for their other much played song Don't Fear (the Reaper), this track continues the band's apparent liking for all things dark and macabre.

Nosferatu is included on their 1977 album Spectres, and the following video perfectly combines their music with the movie world's almost first appearance of the ghoulish vampire.

Not really a Halloween song, but its title evokes the Halloween spirit - and almost everyone knows it.

Bat Out of Hell has often been compared to the musical styling of Bruce Springsteen, but Meatloaf has been quoted as saying it was inspired more by Hitchcock's Psycho..."[all the clients in the Bates Motel] wish they would have left like a bat out of hell... It had nothing to do, believe it or not, with Bruce Springsteen. It had to do with Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho. Source.

Let's finish this rock music Halloween party with some voodoo, zombies, magic and Marie the Witch Queen of New Orleans.

Redbone, a Native American rock band, brought this potent mixture to the music charts of 1971, when it hit the Number Two spot in the UK. This was their only success there, but are probably better remembered in the States for another track, Come and Get Your Love.