Creepiest non-creepy song

[Serenata67]

I am at work and the easy listening station just played Hello by Lionel Ritchie. That song creeps me out. I mean, it's not a creepy song like Thriller or even Somebody's Watching Me or whatever. Maybe it's the music video that creeps me out: grown adult, chasing around the school and making crank calls to a blind high schooler... creepy to me. (And how well would it have gone over if a female made a similar video... Annie Lennox didn't sing No More I Love Yous to a wheel-chair bound teenage boy...) Anyway, whenever I hear that song, I get the heebie-geebies.

What other songs give you the creeps even though they're not inherently creepy song?

[C. Montgomery Burns]

Spinning Wheel by Blood Sweat & Tears. It's mostly the end. The flutes playing "Have You Ever Seen a Lassie?" mixed with the ominous horns bring to mind a horrific accident at a carnival to me.

[Markxxx]

Darren (Savage Garden) Hayes's Creepin' Up On You.

[cjepson]

Originally Posted by C. Montgomery Burns

Spinning Wheel by Blood Sweat & Tears. It's mostly the end. The flutes playing "Have You Ever Seen a Lassie?" mixed with the ominous horns bring to mind a horrific accident at a carnival to me.

That brought to mind the demented keyboard break in Thunderclap Newman's "Something In The Air".

As a child, I used to be genuinely scared by the Beatles' "Wild Honey Pie".

[elfkin477]

"He Keep Me Alive" by Sally Sharpio. No, it's not about someone held hostage and dependant on an evil kidnapper, but about a seriously one-sided relationship that the singer seems to think is all she deserves. The creepy part is knowing that there are people who are really this lost and feel they're worth so little.

[Krokodil]

"The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA" by Donna Fargo. Contrary to the lyrics, she sounds like she's about to open her wrists with a penknife.

[ZipperJJ]

I don't think Hotel California is supposed to be a creepy song...

But when I was in high school my clock radio was playing that tune one morning as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I had a wicked, scary dream to that song and from then on it always creeped me out.

[Idle Thoughts]

I'm going to have to go with Turn Around, Look At Me, by the BeeGees. Apparently creepy sounding enough to be put in the movie Final Destination 3 (heard three times total in the movie--usually before something bad happens).

[SciFiSam]

A lot of Christmas songs are creepy when you think about them. 'Have yourself a merry little Christmas' sits astride the line between heartwarming and bloodchilling. Of course, I might think this because of the X-Files ep it was used in.

Originally Posted by Idle Thoughts

I'm going to have to go with Turn Around, Look At Me, by the BeeGees. Apparently creepy sounding enough to be put in the movie Final Destination 3 (heard three times total in the movie--usually before something bad happens).

Man, that really is creepy! Hard to believe that they thought 'there is someone walking behind you. Turn around, look at me. There is someone watching your footsteps,
turn around, look at me,' wasn't creepy, but the song then becomes more upbeat in the way they're singing, if not the words.

[Nametag]

Originally Posted by scifisam2009

A lot of Christmas songs are creepy when you think about them. 'Have yourself a merry little Christmas' sits astride the line between heartwarming and bloodchilling. Of course, I might think this because of the X-Files ep it was used in.

No, it's not just that -- and the song you know isn't as bad as the original lyrics:
"Have yourself a merry little Christmas
It may be your last
Next year we may all be living in the past"

"Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us no more"

Hugh Martin: freak.

[SciFiSam]

Originally Posted by Nametag

No, it's not just that -- and the song you know isn't as bad as the original lyrics:
"Have yourself a merry little Christmas
It may be your last
Next year we may all be living in the past"

"Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us no more"

Hugh Martin: freak.

Damn shame they changed the words. Though I like the newer version's ambiguity of faithful friends being near to us once more - yep, we're gonna die, but at least we'll see our old friends on the other side!

[Freudian Slit]

I feel that way about the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams." It doesn't creep me out now but when I was younger, like 12 or 13, it felt weird. Maybe the line about people wanting to be used/abused?

[SciFiSam]

Originally Posted by Freudian Slit

I feel that way about the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams." It doesn't creep me out now but when I was younger, like 12 or 13, it felt weird. Maybe the line about people wanting to be used/abused?

I'm pretty sure that song was meant to be a little creepy.

[TruCelt]

I call this the "Stalker's Lament" . It's such a lovely tune, and her voice is so soft and sweet, that you almost miss the actual words she's saying. . .

[Bayard]

Is "Fire on High" by ELO supposed to be creepy? The reversed music in the beginning always gave me the willies when I was a kid. This is probably because I first remember hearing it in the mid-80's at the height of a "backmasking" scare. I figured ELO was up to noooo good.

Even though "We Three Kings" is my favorite Christmas song, I find the music kind of ominous. Hearing it belted out on an organ in an old church during Midnight Mass is kind of eerie to me.

[Serenata67]

Originally Posted by TruCelt

I call this the "Stalker's Lament" . It's such a lovely tune, and her voice is so soft and sweet, that you almost miss the actual words she's saying. . .

Those are the best... the ones that lull you into a sense of happiness or peace, but it sounds like she's kidnapped him and placed him in a dungeon if you really look at the words.

Kinda like the song The Christmas Shoes. At first, I thought the kid was a con artist. I pictured mom in the old car, chain smoking with a 40 in a paper bag teaching her kid this speech so he could con some guy out of a new pair of shoes for her. I mean, the kid repeats the same speech over and over, verbatim. (I know that's the chorus, but still.) Now I feel like an evil person. It's supposed to be about giving and selflessness.

Anyway, that was a little off the topic. Another creepy song is Brain Damage by Pink Floyd. Shoot, most of Dark Side of the Moon is pretty creepy. But all that song especially gave me the creeps.

[Lobot]

Originally Posted by ZipperJJ

I don't think Hotel California is supposed to be a creepy song...

Why not? It's about fame and fortune turning from a dream into a nightmare that you can't escape from.

[CyclopticXander]

Well this one is almost a century old, so I dunno if it's cheating. But holy cow if you're looking for creep factor this is it.

It's about the real murder of Mary Phagan by the way. The sound file is on the page.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/littlemary/littlemary.html

[Ellis Aponte Jr.]

"The Rain, the Park, and Other Things" by the Cowsills. The backing vocals sound disembodied... haunting. It's like a bizarre disorienting dream in which your feet can't find the ground. And everything seems to be coming at you from this high birdsong register - it's just discomfiting.

Also the Ronettes "Best Part of Breaking Up." The way the group singers do a chanty kind of vocal part while the drum bangs away inistently sounds sort of cultlike & frightening.

[Yookeroo]

Originally Posted by Nametag

No, it's not just that -- and the song you know isn't as bad as the original lyrics:
"Have yourself a merry little Christmas
It may be your last
Next year we may all be living in the past"

"Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us no more"

Hugh Martin: freak.

It's a sad song, but I don't see what's creepy about it.

[Argent Towers]

Originally Posted by cjepson

As a child, I used to be genuinely scared by the Beatles' "Wild Honey Pie".

Ditto.

Here are other Beatles songs that I used to find unnerving:

Good Morning Good Morning - opens with a blasting horn riff and then the lines, "nothing to do to save his life/call his wife in" which I take to be in reference to someone who has died in a hospital. Then "nothing to say but what a day/how's your boy been" - in other words, a guy just died, whatever, just another day at work. Unsettling.

Glass Onion - really heavy drumbeats and bass riffs always used to kind of scare me as a kid; this song also has lots of weird cryptic references to the whole "Paul is dead" thing, which gave me the major creeps; and there are those fucking eerie pitch-bending string instrumentals at the end.

The last thirty seconds or so of Lovely Rita - the song goes from a major to a minor key, and the lyrics are replaced with weird animalistic panting sounds and shouts. What the fuck?

Getting Better - there's a nonchalant reference to spousal abuse: "I used to be cruel to my woman and beat her" in this otherwise jolly song.

I don't know if the Beatles intended for these songs to be creepy or what, but they always bothered me.

[Electric Warrior]

Originally Posted by Argent Towers

Getting Better - there's a nonchalant reference to spousal abuse: "I used to be cruel to my woman and beat her" in this otherwise jolly song.

I don't know if the Beatles intended for these songs to be creepy or what, but they always bothered me.

I'm not sure if Getting Better was intended to be creepy, or just true -- John actually did abuse Cynthia and I think the line was a reference to that.

[pepperlandgirl]

Originally Posted by Electric Warrior

I'm not sure if Getting Better was intended to be creepy, or just true -- John actually did abuse Cynthia and I think the line was a reference to that.

Not sure about that. From what I understand, John's contribution (lyrically) to the song was the line It can't get much worse. "I used to be mean to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved" verse was probably all Paul's work.

However, I find Run For Your Life to be the creepiest song ever. I honestly don't believe that Lennon intended it to be a creepy song--I don't think he really intended anything besides a rock number. What I find even more bizarre is that John didn't even come up with the creepiest line by himself. He stole it from Elvis's Baby, Let's Play House. We were at a venue last weekend for a concert, and they blasted it over the speakers at one point. It was the first time I've heard it in probably a year, and it really, really creeped me out. The explictly threatening lyrics paired with the extremely upbeat and poppy music let me wondering just what the fuck any of them had been thinking.

[Student Driver]

Sammy Davis, Jr.'s cover of "The Candy Man." The original song works fairly well in the context of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and became a Davis standard once he covered it. He was interested in acting in the movie, so his use of the song is completely innocuous. Yet, when I hear it now, all I can think of is that it sounds like a song a stereotypical "Free Candy" van-driving child molester would sing.

The instrumentals that open the TV shows Taxi and M*A*S*H are both creepy to me. (I'm aware that "Suicide Is Painless" was meant to be somewhat melancholy, but it's just plain creepy to me.) Not sure why-- Taxi's one of my favorite shows to this day-- but I used to get the same feeling of dread from those songs that I do when, say, I hear a TV or radio station signing off or when an Emergency Broadcast System tone/warning used to come over the air. (As to why I find those creepy... yeah.)

[emcee2k]

Originally Posted by pepperlandgirl

Not sure about that. From what I understand, John's contribution (lyrically) to the song was the line It can't get much worse. "I used to be mean to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved" verse was probably all Paul's work.

No, John wrote that part. The creepiness is compounded by the the power saw sound at the start of that verse.

[Chez Guevara]

Originally Posted by scifisam2009

A lot of Christmas songs are creepy when you think about them. 'Have yourself a merry little Christmas' sits astride the line between heartwarming and bloodchilling. Of course, I might think this because of the X-Files ep it was used in.

From the Wiki entry on the film The Victors.

One of the cinematic highpoints is the detour of one truck load of GI's out of a convoy, for the express purpose of supplying witnesses to the execution by firing squad of a GI deserter Pvt Eddie Slovik. Depicted in a huge, otherwise empty, snow covered field near a chateau at Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines on 31 January 1945, while the movie audience first hears Frank Sinatra singing 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' and then a chorus of 'Hark the herald angels sing,' after the fatal shots are fired.

I've never liked that song.

[Spoke]

Time of the Season - The Zombies

Always struck me as having a creepy, vaguely menacing vibe, even though there's nothing creepy about the lyrics.

[Icerigger]

Originally Posted by krokodil

The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA" by Donna Fargo. Contrary to the lyrics, she sounds like she's about to open her wrists with a penknife.

The HBO program Big Love used this song very well when a girl was singing it while trying to escape being married to an 80 year old prophet of a FLDS religious compound.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZegnocvoBU

[kelly5078]

Originally Posted by Idle Thoughts

I'm going to have to go with Turn Around, Look At Me, by the BeeGees. Apparently creepy sounding enough to be put in the movie Final Destination 3 (heard three times total in the movie--usually before something bad happens).

Never heard this version, but the original was done by The Vogues, a Lettermen-esque group, and I found it disturbing.

The song that's always creeped me out, though, is "Black Is Black," by Los Bravos. Not long after it came out, I had the flu and woke up out of a fever dream with this thing going through my head. It still gives me the shivers thinking of that.

The video's creepy too, made even more so by the bad quality.

[Freudian Slit]

Originally Posted by scifisam2009

I'm pretty sure that song was meant to be a little creepy.

Yeah, but not as creepy as I thought it was.

Also, the Turtles' "Happy Together"and "Elenore."

[jayjay]

Back to the Beatles...

I've never been able to sit all the way through "Revolution #9". Ever. It's just so weirdly constructed that it's very unsettling to me. I can't really describe the feeling...almost like everything's falling out from under me, conceptually. It's the only song on the White Album that I'll skip over if I'm listening through.

[crowmanyclouds]

Originally Posted by kelly5078

... the original was done by The Vogues ...

Nope,

"Turn Around, Look at Me" is the name of a song written by Jerry Capehart.

In 1961, Glen Campbell released his version as a single. This was his first song to chart in the United States, hitting number sixty-two on the Billboard Hot 100. ...
... In 1962, The Lettermen released their version as a single. It made it to number five on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart ...
... In 1964, while Bee Gees were yet in Australia, they released a version of the song that, however, it did not chart. ...
... In 1968, The Vogues released their remake as a single. This version was very successful, reaching number seven on the Hot 100. ...

CMC fnord!

[Freudian Slit]

Barbie Girl just to freak me out, too, when it first came out. I'm not really sure why. I guess maybe the idea of a Barbie doll being that obviously sexy? Now I just sort of see it as kind of adorably sleazy.

[Gail]

My teenage daughter thinks that The Guess Who's Rain Dance is creepy. I never thought so.

[Saintly Loser]

Chuck Berry's Wee Wee Hours.

In a wee little room
I sit alone and think of you
In a wee little room
I sit alone and think of you
I wonder if you still remember
All the things we used to do

You know something bad is going to happen in that wee little room. It's a toss-up whether he or the woman will end up dead. There will be blood on the walls for sure.

[Morbo]

I Will Follow Him, by Little Peggy March.

I will follow him, follow him
Wherever he may go,
And near him I always will be,
For nothing can keep me away,
He is my destiny.

I love him, I love him, I love him,
And where he goes I'll follow, I'll follow, I'll follow.


She's either a stalker, or someone in desperate need of some independence.

[jayjay]

Originally Posted by Morbo

I Will Follow Him, by Little Peggy March.

I will follow him, follow him
Wherever he may go,
And near him I always will be,
For nothing can keep me away,
He is my destiny.

I love him, I love him, I love him,
And where he goes I'll follow, I'll follow, I'll follow.


She's either a stalker, or someone in desperate need of some independence.

Or a nun.

[Serenata67]

Every Breath You Take ... soooo stalker song.

[panamajack]

Originally Posted by C. Montgomery Burns

Spinning Wheel by Blood Sweat & Tears. It's mostly the end. The flutes playing "Have You Ever Seen a Lassie?" mixed with the ominous horns bring to mind a horrific accident at a carnival to me.

The song being played is "Ach du lieber Augustin". It has a slightly cheery tune that's almost identical to "Have You Ever Seen a Lassie?", but it's about a drunk guy who passed out in a pit full of corpses in plague-ridden Vienna. So it takes naturally to being made creepy.

I find just about anything by The Big Bopper, but especially Chantilly Lace, to be really creepy. He just sounds like a sexual predator for some reason.

I second your mention of Time of the Season, spoke-. Maybe it's the "Who's your daddy?" line.

[Hrududu]

Minnie Ripperton's Lovin You freaks me out, and I don't know why. I think its the piano.

[jackdavinci]

Clay Aiken's Invisible

If I was invisible
Then I could just watch you in your room
If I was invincible
I'd make you mine tonight

[Rico]

Originally Posted by C. Montgomery Burns

Spinning Wheel by Blood Sweat & Tears. It's mostly the end. The flutes playing "Have You Ever Seen a Lassie?" mixed with the ominous horns bring to mind a horrific accident at a carnival to me.

To be fair to BST, if you turn the volume up at the end of the trainwreck, you'll hear the group laughing,.and one says "That wasn't too good..."

Major understatement, IMHO.

[Annie-Xmas]

Melanie's "Brand New Key." I got a brand new pair of roller skates, you got a brand new key. *Shudder*

[Zebra]

I've always been creeped out by Dido's Here With Me. For some reason the song seems to me to be from the point of view of a ghost who is waiting for her lover to die before she can rest in peace.

[Ferret Herder]

Originally Posted by Serenata67

Every Breath You Take ... soooo stalker song.

That's supposed to be creepy! Sting has said in interviews that he's just floored by how many people have told him that it's "their" relationship song, that kind of thing.

[astorian]

Originally Posted by Nametag

No, it's not just that -- and the song you know isn't as bad as the original lyrics:
"Have yourself a merry little Christmas
It may be your last
Next year we may all be living in the past"

"Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us no more"

Hugh Martin: freak.

Are you assuming that a Christmas song is always SUPPOSED to be cheery, carefree and happy?

Are you forgetting the context in which the song was written?

First, it was part of the soundtrack to the movie musical "Meet Me in St. Louis." Second, it was written while the Second World War was raging.

For both the characters in the movie AND for millions of ordinary Americans, Christmas that year was less than joyous, as loved ones were going far away and might not ever be coming back.

Its message is, "Christmas this year isn't as wonderful as in the past, but let's make it as happy as possible, and try look forward to better times ahead." That makes it a SAD song with a tinge of hope, not a creepy song.

It only BECAME a bit creepy years after the war ended, when the lyrics were changed to make it a bit happier. The newer, cheerier lyrics just don't fit with the music.

[WOOKINPANUB]

The first thing that came to my mind was Spinning Wheel, now with even more creepy goodness brought to you by panamajack. Thanks, dude!

I always get a little freaked out by the industrial sound effects at the start of Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs". Also those weird tribal, panting sounds just before the chorus of "Tell me Something Good".

[astorian]

Originally Posted by ZipperJJ

I don't think Hotel California is supposed to be a creepy song...

On the contrary, it's DEFINITELY supposed to be a creepy song. It's about the seductive but destructive nature of wealth and celebrity in Southern California, about how hard it can be to give up things like drugs and booze and parties and cheap sex, even after you've figured out that they're going to destroy you.

[Hoopy Frood]

Originally Posted by Ferret Herder

That's supposed to be creepy! Sting has said in interviews that he's just floored by how many people have told him that it's "their" relationship song, that kind of thing.

Yeah, I was going to make the same comment.

And along the lines of Time of the Season, some other "Father Figure" songs:

Father Figure by George Michael

Seventeen by Kip Winger

Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon by Neil Diamond (and later covered by Urge Overkill)

[kelly5078]

Originally Posted by crowmanyclouds

Nope

I stand humbly corrected. But which version is creepiest?