It’s October, and I can’t be more excited! The summer heat
has finally broken, leaves are falling, and it’s gearing up for one of my
favorite holidays- Halloween! It’s a time for candy, costumes, parties, tri-colored
wax passed off as actual candy, pumpkin carving, monsters, long scarves, scary
movie marathons, and pumpkin flavored beer. I enjoy some more than others, but
I will not tell you which.
What better way to welcome the holiday than take a listen to
its theme song? I will make a nod in the direction of the 1962 hit “Monster
Mash”. While it lasted for decades as the only song directly relating to Halloween,
its cornball charm was blown away by the next contender. “This is Halloween”
from the Tim Burton movie The Nightmare before
Christmas encapsulates the wonderful fun of the season. It has a creepy but
bombastic tune, a roster list of nightmare inducing monsters, and is just an
overall blast to sing. Not to mention it features the classiest undead to ever
grace the silver screen, Jack Skellington. Forget every metrosexual vampire and
charming ghosts, Jack is the true king.
And apparently I’m not the only one to think that this is a
fantastic song. I’ve heard so many worthy covers of “this is Halloween” that I
will dedicate this blog post for posting youtube links to the best ones I could
find. I will start you off, of course,
with the classic. Great harmonies along with goofy monster voices make it light
hearted and fun. The Claymation video is still a sight to behold with dark but
kid friendly imagery. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpvdAJYvofI
For the more hardcore fans, there is the ever popular Marilyn
Manson cover. It adds a great electric kick and deep bass to an already pumping
song. It loses a lot of the harmony, but Manson makes up for it by keeping some
of the different spooky sounding voices. His vocals also have a harsh
electronic edge to them that makes the song seem more serious, but you can
still tell it’s all in good fun. A great subculture take that still keeps it
light hearted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVSpfQHEsNY
Voiceplay is an amazing acapella group, who has also done
the Disney classic “Grim Grinning Ghosts”, which I also recommend you check
out. Their rendition of “This is Halloween” is a punchy swing cover. It has a
great rhythm and very interesting changes to the pacing and some of the main
melodies. The harmony is absolutely gorgeous of course. They carry the entire
song with only a drum for accompaniment. I also like their take on the monster
voices, while their normal singing is just fantastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MovZl4qfykY
(I apologize for the MLP video, I couldn’t find an alternative video.)
And I knew that there had to be at least one good techno or
dubstep cover of this song. It would be a great thing for a DJ to play at all
the upcoming costume dance parties. I had to sort through a couple of mediocre
ones, but I finally found Whiiite’s dubstep version. The artist used very tasteful
use of samples from the original song, both with the lyrics and the music. My favorite
part where he repeats the “in this town we call home” before finishing with “everyone
hails to the pumpkin song” and a great bass drop. This song sticks with the
original tempo, which I thought would be too slow for a dance song, but Whiiite
somehow makes it work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK_HvyRg4Hw
So sit back, enjoy your seasonal pumpkin/apple related
treats, and enjoy some spooky seasonal music everyone!
