Here’s another one that used to creep me out a bit when I was little, because of the singing style and the line at the end about having two heads.
“My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
But I said dear doctor
I think that its you instead
Because I have got a thing
Thats unique and new
To prove it Ill have
The last laugh on you
cause instead of one head
I got two
And you know two heads are better than one.”
By the time I was a teenager, though, Twisted by Joni Mitchell was one of my favorite songs. Still love it.
The Stones “Paint it Black” always seemed badass and spooky to me, but my older sister had one song on some album, oh, around 1974-6, that scared the bejeezus out of me every time-- it would start and I’d leap up onto the furniture and try not to touch the floor and go into a general panic: I think (ran into this in adulthood and it was very reminiscent and is from the right time period) it was Phaedrus by Tangerine Dream. How my Barry Manilow-loving sister would have gotten into Tangerine Dream is beyond me, though.
“Swamp Witch” by Jim Stafford…my mom had one of his albums (may have been Greatest Hits…don’t know) and I used to like “Spiders & Snakes” so she’d play it sometimes, but when “Swamp Witch” came on I’d make her turn it off.
I do not recall what my reaction to “My Girl Bill” was, though it may have had a formative impact…
It should be noted that this was when I was 5 or 6 or something like that.
"Working My Way Back To You’ has always creeped me out and I don’t know why. I cannot listen to it. It has the same effect on my sister, so maybe it’s genetic.
“Killing Me Softly” was the one that freaked me out when I was a kid, because of the idea that you could kill someone (softly!) by singing a song to them. :eek:
My sister was a big Kiss fan in their heyday, so I was exposed to their music as a young boy. One song that scared me was “God of Thunder”. I was also freaked out by hearing the music gradually slowing to a near complete stop at the end of “Black Diamond”. It made me think the whole space-time continuum (or my vague understanding of this concept) was coming to a halt.
When I was quite yong the song “My Grandfather’s Vlock” scared me a bit. And then there was an episode of The Twilight Zone that used is as the basis of a story (at least that’s what I recall throguh the haze of years). There later as a preteen or early teen there was “Angie Baby” by Helen Reddy. Intentionally weird song that I found really creepy. Ugh!
The video for Babooshka by Kate Bush used to terrfiy me as a kid - I thought she really was turning into some wild, scary, crazy banshee. It freaked me out. Even to this day, that songs still sounds dangerous to me. And I get a strange, gleeful thrill out of watching the clip.
Strawberry Fields Forever. I don’t like the creepy flute/weird sounds ending. I can’t even describe what it sounds like exactly. Just freaks me out. Shudder.
Strawberry Fields has a menacing undercurrent that I’ve always really liked, and you may have picked up on that.
The music video for Wild Wild Life by Talking Heads freaked me out something fierce. As I remember it, it features a claymation guy rolling his tongue into a hot dog roll and eating it!
I watched the video again on YouTube and couldn’t see it, though - maybe it’s on the TV monitors in the background. The big-eyed bald woman pulling her wig off may have creeped me out, too. Also: that’s probably the first place I ever saw John Goodman, and while I’ve become a pretty big Talking Heads fan, that song is no Girlfriend is Better.
“Come Together” by the Beatles. Love it now, but as a toddler, that was too much.
“Cat Scratch Fever” by Ted Nugent, same reason. And I have NOT learned to love it.
I was also 5 when Thriller came out and it absolutely terrified me. I remember I was playing outside and mom was listening to the cassette, and I really, really, really had to go to the bathroom, but I was too scared to go into the house, for fear that I’d have to listen to it.
The Girl is Mine was the song before it, so I would start to get really anxious when I heard it, but I would always stay and listen to the whole thing, even though I knew THAT SONG would be next. I didn’t know who Paul McCartney was at the time, and if I had ever listened to the Beatles, I was too young to make the connection, but I found his voice very soothing.
Pink Floyd’s Echoes from Meddle gave me a few freaky dreams. That ghost-like screeching in the middle was weird. The first time I listened to the album all the way through was while I was in bed when I was around 8. Not good planning on my part.
Just an alternate theory, could the Lee Hazelwood/Nancy Sinatra duet Some Velvet Morning, with its constant discussion of “Phaedra”, have been the song?
When I was about 10 or so, there was a rap song about Freddy Krueger that scared the hell out of me. I wouldn’t watch the movies, but I heard the song by accident, and up until that point I’d had no idea Freddy attacked people in their sleep.
Good god I wish you hadn’t reminded me of that horror. Thinking about it, it was probably just some bloke speaking through a harmonica…maybe that explains my fear of pre-electric Dylan…
