You will probably hear this song six times on Halloween.  Not because DJs can be lazy, because this is what you need to hear.  There is a reason this won best music video for years on end.  There’s a reason even children in rural Indonesia know this dance.  Its one of the greatest songs of all time and on Halloween it gets its due.

2) I Put A Spell on You – Screaming Jay Hawkins

While a fine musician, it’s rare that you get the chance to play Screaming Jay Hawkins at a party. There’s a reason for that too, but relish this chance.  I put a spell on you has been done by Nina Simone, Credence Clearwater Revival, and Better Midler, but the Hawkins version is the weirdest. On Halloween weirdest should win.

3) Run – Gnarles Barkley

This song is like being in a horror movie with a fantastic DJ.  There is something about songs with up, happy beats and scary words that always gets me.  Cee-lo’s voice is soaring and strange. He’s trained enough to have a killer range and command of songs and distinctive enough to immediately recognizable.  This might be my favorite song on this list and I still haven’t talked about the amazing organ lick yet.

4) Skeletons – Lifesavas

I always thought pastors and priests were the best at telling ghost stories.  They are invested in trying to scare you straight from the first time they talk to you.  So when lifsavas, a hip hop group with Christian themes say get your skeletons out of your closet or else, that or else carries the weight of the hell fires. It’s not just the children’s choir sample that makes this song freaky, or the weird half harpsichord half organ sounding beat. It’s the possibility of a Night on Bald Mountain style eternal damnation.

5) The Horror – RJD2

There are a lot of techno or hip hop producers that sample movies.  It’s the rare producer who can turn those samples into its own moody and gripping narrative.  RJD2 “The Horror” is spooky but more importantly its funky.

6) Psycho Killer – Talking Heads

This is another example of contrasting lyrics to melody and beat. There is no reason this song should be about a Psycho Killer.  If you didn’t speak English you wouldn’t know this song was about a murderer. The only thing you would have to clue you in would be that menacing baseline that starts the song out.

7) Sky is Falling – Blackalicious

You know what’s scary?  The Coming Apocolypse.  There are not enough hip hop songs about this.  Busta Rhymes and Blackalicious might have the market cornered on this topic, if so its in good hands.

8) Ghost of Steven Foster – Squirrel Nut Zippers

The vocal quality of this song is enough to give me the creeps.  Even when I am listening to this crooner take on love songs I can get spooked out.  I loved this song as a kid for its strange lyrics and spooky tune.  I still love it now and when I listen to it I can get sent back to that time.

9) Everyone’s Got em’ – White Ghost Shivers

Any White Ghost Shivers song could have gone on this list.  So I just picked my favorite. If you don’t know the Shivers you need to make a trip down to Austin and see them play, or join me in begging them to play in Chicago.

10) I Turned into a Martian – The Misfits

The obvious choice here would have been Halloween.  But I like I turned into a martian better.  It’s more like the kind of song I would have written when I was on a six grade sugar rush.  Sadly in the six grade I hadn’t yet formed a horror punk band.

11) Devil’s Pie – D’Angelo

If anyone is qualified to write about the fearsome nature of money success and fame its D’Angelo.  Here’s a man who could of had as much pie and cake as he could stomach and walked away from it. The world loved him for his song about the corrupting power of money and fame.  But after releasing the album that featured this song he stepped out of the spotlight.  “I ain’t going out for a slice of the Devil’s Pie”

12) Chase the Devil – Lee “Scratch” Perry

I might have said that preachers tell the best ghost stories but that’s not true.  Mad men tell the best ghost stories, and Lee Perry had to be at least a little crazy to invent scratching records and burn down his legendary recording studio.  But this song isn’t about being scared.  Its about getting that evil bastard once and for all.  “When I catch him my lance in hand/ And if him slip I’m gone with his hand.” How do you like that Devil? Shoe’s on the other foot.

Happy Halloween folks

Tennesse Ernie Ford – 16 Tons

The list starts with 16 Tons. Of all the many kinds of dangerous, unrewarding and onerous types of manual labor few are more infamous than working in a coal mine, and there is not a better or more known coal mining song than 16 Tons

Desmond Dekker and The Haitians – The Isrealites

Labor as Desmond Dekker thinks of it is not for money, luxury or comfort. “Get up in the morning slaving for bread sir.” This song also marks what will be a theme in this list of labor and the plight of the laborer leading to crime.

Masta Ace – On Da Grind

“Is anybody out there on the grind like me?” Its funny how work can make you feel like a mindless cog in a larger machine and at the same time isolated from that machine. But more than a protest against work this song is a cadence for Masta Ace to work to. it’s not just about being on the grind its that I’m still on the grind.

Cake – Opera Singer

Ok, an opera singer is a ways from a coal miner, but this song is ultimately about work and how a person profession can define her, or in this case him. “I am an opera singer.”

Animals – House of the Rising Sun

While the language in this song is moody and suggestive and this version is sung by a man this song is ultimately about prostitution. The House is a bawdy house. The work is the worlds oldest profession.

Ella Fitzgerald – Love for Sale

Men are not the only ones who labor, and all those who work (male, female or otherwise) have at some point felt as though they were selling themselves. It’s that feeling of giving too much of what we to the boss, business or consumer that makes this kind of work a metaphor for all kinds of work.

Sam Cooke – Chain Gang

Sam Cooke took his inspiration for a labor song from prison laborers.

Long John

But, with all respect to Sam Cooke, this is the sound of the men working on the chain gang.

What did I miss? Please, add your suggestions in the comments below.