spoke-: I Feel You is even more creepy, IMHO.
(Trying really REALLY hard not to laugh…)
Umm … Voguevixen? The line from Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung” is
Sitting on a park bench,
Eyeing little girls with bad intent
“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi
Which is entirely bad enough…
Catrandom
I’ll bet Ian Anderson would’ve used “Five little girls with severed heads” if he had thought of it at the time.
Uke
I don’t have any scary-qua-scary songs to add, but here are a couple of good creepy ones:
No One Lives Forever by Oingo Boingo
Tokyo Storm Warning by Elvis Costello, which always seemed to me like the sound of the apocalypse
The Violent Femmes have already been mentioned; I find their Kiss Off and Add It Up particularly creepy, especially in their live versions (since they’re both essentially suicide songs)
Tom Waits has lots of creep-out material, notably the entire The Black Rider record
I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am
Probably nobody’s heard this one, but Days of The New have a song on their new CD (aptly titled Days of the New 2), I think it’s track 11 or so. It’s not the song itself, it’s the intro. There’s this creepy circus like music, and these strange midget like giggles that sort of float around the car then these wierd noises and random screams and yells fade in, then it slowly dies down. You can hear someone distantly ask if everyone’s okay, getting more and more frantic. Then someone yells “OH MY GOD! It’s starting again!” the end of again is kind of choked off, and more creepy stuff happens. I’ll see if I can’t upload an .mp3 of the intro so you all can hear it.
–Tim
You can’t accidently create a handicapped baby whilst smoking pot. - Coldfire
I agree with the choice of “Love Will Tear us Apart’ by Joy Division. It isn’t really scary, but it is terrifying. You can almost hear Ian Curtis put the gun to his head. His suicide shouldn’t have been a suprise after that song.
“Sister Ray” by the Velvet Underground always seemed put me on edge, unlike “Heroin”, which alwasys seemed to be more seductive than scary.
Under the category of moral lessons"The Devil’s Right Hand” by Steve Earle was pretty effective.
But if you want to listen to a body of work that will send shivers down your spine go for a walk at night down a dark lane with your walkman playing Robert Johnson : shiver
Keith
Me and a gun-Tori Amos isnotnice.
Did she jump or was she pushed?-Richard & Linda Thompson
Homer, I have the new Days of the New CD, I just listened to the song you mentioned. Yes, it is creepy. What do you think its supposed to be???
I have Nine Inch Nails’ Further down the spiral, which has remixes of The Downward Spiral. Some of the songs are pretty weird in a scary way.
Also, On The Run (Pink Floyd, DSOTM)is intense. It’s freaked me out before.
“I am so smart, I am so smart, s-m-r-t, i mean s-m-a-r-t”
You know, I remembered that as soon as I posted, but I’d thought it “severed heads” for YEARS when I was a kid, until I was a teenager and heard it clearly on a good stereo, haha.
Boycott Circuit City
(See my thread in the pit)
What about Nirvana’s accoustic version of “My Girl” from the Unplugged CD? Kurt just sounds completely hopeless.
The 80s threads inspired me to listen to a compilation I have, and was creeped out…again…by “I eat Cannibals” by Total Coelo. Eep.
SwimmingRiddles wrote:
Good one! I had thought about that one too, but wasn’t sure of the title.
In a similar vein, there are a number of so-called “murder ballads” in the bluegrass genre which are pretty creepy. (Typical theme: Man catches wife or lover cheating. Man kills wife/lover in graphically detailed fashion. Man goes to prison or is sentenced to death. Man sings mournful song.)
I mentioned a couple of R.E.M. tunes from the “Chronic Town” E.P. Really, all of the songs on Chronic Town, and most of the songs on R.E.M.'s first Album Murmur, have a pretty creepy feel to them if you ask me, thanks largely to the production of Mitch Easter.
We’re putting together a pretty creepy soundtrack with this thread. Now all we need is a good script.
–In France I’m considered a genius.
Lou Reed’s “Kicks” was disturbing to me, in that I was really getting into the beat and all that the first time I heard it, feeling that it was a really cool song, and only toward the end I realized that it was talking about the thrill of committing murder. “Much better than sex.” Somehow the recorded conversations interspersed with the melody made it really creepy, especially right after the line “how the blood ran down his ankles”–it raises the hair on the back of my neck every time I hear it.
“Perfect Day” was also disturbing, but in a different way. “Such a perfect day/You made me forget myself/I thought I was someone else, someone good/You’re gonna reap just what you sow”.
And I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Beatles’ “Within Without You”. Scary stuff, that*.
DHR
*Note: irony used here.
Speaking of Murder Ballads, let’s throw in the moldy oldie “In the Pines.” Recorded by everyone from Bill Monroe to Dolly parton to Dave Van Ronk.
Girl does something bad, not very clear what, and someone’s going off in the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines. To bury something? To be buried? And then there’s the line about how “his head was never found.”
Uke
Ukelele Ike wrote:
Yeah, that’s the song SwimmingRiddles and I are talking about. Nirvana covered it on their “Unplugged” CD under the title (apparently) of “My Girl”.
Checking in with the gratuitous Rush recording:
“Witch Hunt” from Moving Pictures is very frightening.
God is my co-pilot. Blame Him.
“Psycho”, as covered by Elvis Costello. It is an old Leon Payne song featuring the lyric "I know you think I’m Psycho, but Mama, I didn’t mean to break your cup.
Keith
You want brilliance BEFORE I’ve had my coffee!!!
And here are the lyrics.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Psycho
Can Mary fry some fish, mama
I’m as hungry as can be
Oh lord, how I wish, mama
You could stop the baby cryin’
'Cause my head is killing me
I saw my ex again last night mama
She was at the dance at Miller’s store
She was with that Jackie White mama
I killed them both
And they’re buried under Jacob’s sycamore
You think I’m psycho don’t you mama
I didn’t mean to break your cup
You think I’m psycho don’t you mama
You better let 'em lock me up
Oh, don’t hand me Johnny’s pup mama
As I might squeeze him too tight
I’m havin’ crazy dreams again mama
So let me tell you 'bout last night
I woke up in Johnny’s room mama
Standing right there by his bed
With my hands around his throat mama
Wishing both of us were dead
You think I’m psycho don’t you mama
I just killed Johnny’s pup
You think I’m psycho don’t you mama
You’d better let 'em lock me up
Oh you recall that little girl mama
I believe her name was Betty Clark
Oh don’t tell me that she’s dead mama
'Cause I just saw her in the park
We were sitting on a bench mama
Thinking of a game to play
Seems I was holding a wrench mama
Then my mind just walked away
You think I’m psycho don’t you mama
I didn’t mean to break your cup
You think I’m psycho don’t you mama
Mama why don’t you get up?
It’s not really in the “Murder Ballad” genre but more the “dead girlfriend” genre, I remember staying up late one night listening to “SuperGold” (syndicated radio oldies show) and they played a song called “Ebony Eyes” by I believe the Everly Brothers. It was about how some girl was flying home to finally be with her true love and the plane crashed and she died. BLECH! I was up all night because I was too creeped out to sleep!
“That’s impossible! Cartman doesn’t know a rainforest from a Pop-Tart!”
“Yes I do! Pop-Tarts are frosted!”
Run Through The Jungle - CCR
God Only Knows - the Beach Boys
Strange Angels - Elmore James
Several songs from Queensryche’s ‘Rage for Order’ album:
Gonna Get Close To You" (another stalking song, but it doesn’t creep me out as much as it used to. Was written by a woman, too!)
Walk In The Shadows (for the first lines - You say you’re through with me/Well, I’m not through with you" shiver