There’s one good, solid party weekend left before Halloween hits on Monday, and that means family costume parties for all ages or boisterous bashes for grown-ups only.
Either way, you’re going to need enough music to keep things going for at least a couple of hours. That’s where streaming services like Spotify come in. Love it or hate it, sometimes it is just easier to pop up the list so you can worry about other things.
I’ve found a few lists to check out to get the spooky going, starting with one for people who simply want all the popular basics:
Spirit Halloween’s Player (with a few creative liberties)
A user named “knightoftrash” put together seven hours of music that you would hear in a Spirit Halloween superstore, with a few other additions. If you have ever been in Spirit or know anyone who worked there, many of these are what they hear…over and over. It has all the standards, though, from movie themes to “costume specific” tunes and plain old non Halloween party fare. There’s “Ghostbusters,” “Werewolves of London,” “Monster Mash,” “Thriller” and more. Easy “one stop shop” for the most popular Halloween Party sounds, like this one by the Ramones:
Okay, now we’ve got the usual suspects out of the way, let’s get a little different and weird:
Hi-Tide Halloween
Hi-Tide Recordings gives us three hours of cool surf rock, tiki music, rockabilly and other sleek and fabulous sounds including many of the artists on their label such as The Volcanics and Black Flamingos. I’ve talked about Hi-Tides’s music in the past, now here’s their curated spooky favorites, like “El Vampiro Robot” by Los Tiki Phantoms:
Classical Halloween
This one is put together by Spotify, and is a nice collection of both familiar classical pieces from Bach to Stravinsky, and more contemporary movie themes (including a ton of John Williams). This is one if you want to keep things cool and spooky, but minus the novelty sounds. Yes, it does have “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” and “Carmina Burana”, but you’ll also get deeper dives like the Overture from “Der Vampyr”:
Halloween Vintage 50s 60s
Vintage Halloween style is coming back, and this includes a love for the groovy mid-century sounds. A user named Fernando Chow gives us more than four hours of it. You’ll learn Bobby “Boris” Pickett did more than “Monster Mash,” and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins had other songs besides “I Put A Spell On You.” It’s a great little time machine of sounds, including “The Boogie Man” from The Cadillacs.
Electro Swing Halloween Edition
I know a some people who think “electro swing” is just horrible, but I love the eerie funky mix, especially at parties. This is a weird, circus world of old and new fused together in a swinging cocktail. There are some popular songs with new, weird twist like the “Duke Skellington Remix” of “Spooky” and an upbeat piano version of “The Munsters Theme”. Since this is the year we’re saying “goodbye” to Michael Myers (again), here’s Betty Booom with an Electro Swing version of the “Halloween Theme.”
There’s still some time for party planning before we move on to the next special occasion, but at least we know picking music won’t be a problem.