Halloween Song
Tamar Rochon
I know almost nothing about this song so I've only been able to search for it in the vaguest terms. It's an instrumental/orchestral song, so no lyrics (at least, none that I ever heard). It's a relatively uptempo pace, with like a fun/spooky vibe. I don't know if it's actually a halloween song, but I've always associated it with halloween and it sure sounds like one.
I think it's an older song, but I'm not positive. I think I first heard it in the early 90s. If I had to compare it to anything else, stylistically, it would be the type of older, retro, public domain music that you hear in things like Ren & Stimpy or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. For a long time I thought it was actually in Ren & Stimpy, but if it is I haven't been able to find it.
The last time I actually heard it was in a commercial for ABC Family's "13 Days of Halloween," around 2013-2014, so I know the song exists, after spending so many years unable to find it. But I already combed through youtube watching every promo I could find, and no luck.
Happy October! I come back to this song a lot, and the meaning always seems to elude me. A lot of the posts I've read speculate that the song is about becoming bored/unsatisfied, or something to a similar tune
This interpretation may be off base, but it's how I've always interpreted it. Does anyone else get this vibe from the song? The story in the lyrics feel so poetic yet sad, and it's beautiful that their interpretation feels fluid
The "Halloween" single was the last Misfits release to include guitarist Bobby Steele. Both songs on the single had been recorded in August 1980 for a planned album. During the sessions bassist Jerry Only was grooming his younger brother Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein to join the band, and Doyle recorded his own guitar tracks and overdubs separately in addition to Steele's. The tracks were mixed in September, but in October Steele was ejected from the band in favor of Doyle and the planned album was scrapped. Three of the songs were released as the 3 Hits from Hell EP, while "Halloween" and "Halloween II" were released as a single. In 2001 Caroline Records attempted to release the complete sessions as 12 Hits from Hell, but production was called off after Danzig and Only expressed concerns with the album's layout, packaging, liner notes, mixing, and mastering.
Following the band's breakup in 1983, the 12 Hits from Hell version of "Halloween" was reissued on the 1985 compilation album Legacy of Brutality, one of the few tracks on the album not to have overdubbed guitar and bass tracks recorded by Danzig. The single versions of both songs were re-released on Collection II in 1995, and all of the versions were included in The Misfits box set in 1996, along with the 12 Hits from Hell studio recording of "Halloween II".
Mudhoney included a sample of "Halloween" in their 1988 cover of Sonic Youth's song of the same title on the "Touch Me I'm Sick"/"Halloween" split single. "Halloween" has been covered by several other bands in subsequent years: East Bay punk rock AFI covered the song for their All Hallow's EP (1999),[1] and Dropkick Murphys recorded a version for the compilation Back on the Streets: Japanese/American Punk Unity (2000) which was later re-released on Singles Collection, Volume 2 (2005). The American death metal band Winds of Plague recorded a cover of the song that they included as an iTunes bonus track on their 2009 album The Great Stone War.
Music history and appreciation are often under-looked aspects of having a career in the audio industry. To understand how to be a great audio engineer, you have to understand what makes music great. Knowing what songs have been popular gives you insight into how new songs could sound. By listening back over the history of music, you can add a lot of tricks to your engineering repertoire. Perhaps you hear a different song arrangement that makes you think. Maybe the way the drums are mixed on a tune gives you inspiration to work on your own mixes.
I absolutely love this song. It was originally released on Halloween, 1981. This was also the last Misfits recording featuring guitarist Bobby Steele. The lyrics perfectly capture the thoughts that travel through my head every time the weather gets chilly and the leaves start to turn.
Originally created in 1948 by Stan Jones, this American ghost tale became popularized by Johnny Cash in 1979. Visions of undead zombie riders on horseback is a chilling thought. It went on to hit the number 2 position on the Billboard Hot Country Singles charts. Many bands have done versions of this song, including The Scorpions, Scatman Crothers, and Spike Jones.
With the help of vocals from Michael Jackson and Jermaine Jackson, this album hit the #2 spot on the US Billboard Hot 100 charts. The music video for this song depicts Rockwell coming home to what appears to be a haunted house. Eventually, it turns out that it is zombies that are watching him. How spooky! Whenever I get that feeling, where the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, this tune goes through my head.
Regarded as Muse's version of Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me, the song's title has been "officially" leaked on March 14th, 2022 via the JSON output from wontstanddown.muse.mu, which contains basic album info. The song was leaked together with the rest of the album on August 23rd. This is the first song since Megalomania to prominently feature a church organ.
The song starts out with an iconic 80s big drum sound with gated reverb, a church organ, and a vocoded vocal, singing "Halloween, Halloween", which also appears during the choruses. A scream sound effect then leads into the song itself. You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween also includes a synth/guitar, similar in style and sound to the one used in Compliance. Alike Compliance, it appears during the chorus. The verses are, in terms of instruments, kept simple, with just a synth bass playing over the drum beat, together ith vocals. The song also features a guitar solo, inspired by that of Van Halen, from Michael Jackson's song Beat It. Despite the song being an 80s-inspired track, it features live drums. During the final chorus, Chris also brings in some bass slap fills. The outro features the famous ascending scale from the intro of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor", played by both Matt on the organ and Chris on the bass, with Dom following up with a closing drum fill.
Apart from screams, mentioned above, the song includes other sound effects and quotes from horror movies like "Misery" and "The Shining", with Bellamy taking stylistic inspiration from Stephen King for the song itself. The sound effects were recorded by two actors, as the band weren't allowed to use direct samples from the movies.[6]
According to producer Aleks Von Korff, the reverbs used on the drums for this song were the EMT250 and the SPX90. Plug-in wise, Baby Audio's Super VHS and Universal Audio's Capitol Chambers were also used. 10+ different combinations of drums were tested out prior to settling on what's heard on the final product.[7]
Bach could not have thought that his nearly 9-minute organ piece would become so strongly associated with haunted houses and sinister machinations. As a musicologist whose current research is focused on the musical representation of mystery, I see the story of this song as a classic example of how the meaning, use and purpose of music can change over time.
While thousands of Canadians have a bond with the song, few know the artist behind it. After all, when you're seven years old, you don't buy albums or even choose the radio station. And if the singer doesn't have a TV show, you probably don't know his or her name. So we dug a little deeper.
"'C'est l'Halloween' was one of the first French songs I wrote for kids," he says. "It was back in my first year of teaching core French in Halifax in the early '80s. It was actually October 30th and I said, 'Oh, it's Halloween tomorrow. I have to write a song for my students.' That's essentially what I did. And I tried it out the next day with my Grade 4, 5, and 6s. And you can't get a much simpler refrain than 'C'est L'Halloween.' They all liked doing the 'Heys!' etc., so essentially that was the song that inspired me to actually do my first album."
"That was 25 years ago," explains Maxwell. "We've all evolved as a culture over the last 25 years, and what was maybe slightly scary 25 years ago isn't remotely scary now. The average young person sees multiple decapitations every day or whatever else." Though, he adds, "I did get some negative feedback from some fundamentalist religionist who felt that it was offensive to talk about witches and things like that. But Halloween is Halloween, and it's not gonna go away. So I'm not gonna rescind my song because somebody's offended by it."
One thing has always bothered me about the song. The chorus goes, "C'est l'Halloween, c'est l'Halloween, HEY!" That's two "Halloween"s and one "Hey." But when I was in Grade 2, my classmates would yell "Hey!" after every "Halloween." As a budding control freak, it bothered me. Did these kids not appreciate the concept of delayed gratification? According to Maxwell, what I witnessed was the norm.
Almost 30 years later, the song is played in schools across Canada as well as Europe and Australia. Maxwell no longer performs, though he still makes music for kids as the co-creator of AIM Language Learning, a teaching program currently being used by several hundred thousand students.
The company has released an interactive Halloween story, featuring the original "C'est l'Halloween," as well as a 2012 version for a new generation. While the song's original audience now has kids of their own, Maxwell notes, "Yes, but no grandkids yet."
This Is HalloweenInfomationComposerDanny ElfmanLyrics byDanny ElfmanSung byCitizens Of HalloweenFollowed byJack's LamentThis Is Halloween is the opening song of The Nightmare Before Christmas, composed by Danny Elfman.
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