All Songs Considered (NPR)

Episode: Redefining the Halloween Canon
Date: October 21, 2025
Host: Robin Hilton
Guests: Hazel Sills (NPR Music Editor) & Stephen Thompson (Correspondent, NPR Music)

Episode Overview

In this seasonal episode, Robin Hilton and the NPR Music team set out to redefine the "Halloween canon": the set of songs that come back year after year during spooky season. The panel debates which tracks truly deserve a place in Halloween playlists, aiming to move beyond novelty hits like "Monster Mash" and "Thriller" to consider new, genuinely eerie, or autumnal songs. The team covers personal nostalgia picks, new releases, and the definitive "Mount Rushmore" of Halloween tracks.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Belongs in the Halloween Music Canon?

• Stephen introduces the idea: "Let’s agree on a more expansive Halloween music canon. What songs do we want to see pop up around spooky season that are true to the season but also are not just novelty songs... but like, actually spooky songs that rule?" (02:44)
• The group divides the conversation into playful, clear categories:
  • Songs that are truly terrifying
  • Ghosts from your childhood (nostalgia picks)
  • Something new
  • Seasonal/autumnal songs
  • The Mount Rushmore of Halloween songs

2. Songs That Are Truly Terrifying

Killer by Phoebe Bridgers

• Stephen: "It is a gloomy song. It is a song that feels autumnal... The horror icons that speak most to me have a certain level of humanity to them... A certain intimacy. ... Dracula... feels the scariest and the truest of the season." (05:04)
• Hazel: "There’s a spooky kind of almost like normalcy to this song... Phoebe weaves in these creepy aspects of humanity into her work in a really intimate way." (05:49)
• Robin: "Sometimes the most terrifying thing in the world is your own thoughts." (06:13)

If I Had a Heart by Fever Ray

• Hazel: "It almost feels like a western score, it’s like I feel like I’m walking down a dark road... The lyrics are so terrifyingly opaque... This song is. It's a scary song to me." (09:05)
• Stephen: "That is such a good entry in the Halloween canon. That’s exactly what I’m talking about." (10:10)

John Wayne Gacy, Jr. by Sufjan Stevens

• Robin: "It’s about that, and it’s otherwise so incredibly beautiful and delicate. It’s that contrast that is so creepy and unsettling to me." (12:57)
• Stephen: "He just needs to bump it up because his songs often invoke ghosts and killers and the liminal space between the living and the dead." (13:46)
• Robin: "It's the Silent Night of Halloween songs." (14:26)

3. Ghosts From Your Childhood – The Nostalgia Round

Goosebumps Theme Song

• Hazel: "I’m a millennial, so I’m a child of the 90s. And this song just... lives so large in my brain." (17:38)

Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of a Haunted House (Disneyland Records, 1964)

• Robin: "For people of a certain age, this was inescapable. Any haunted house you went to, it was playing... It was a Halloween tradition." (20:43)
• Hazel: "I feel inspired, honestly, to just start playing this in my home at all times." (21:41)

Welcome to My Nightmare by Alice Cooper

• Stephen: "The first song that jumps immediately to mind for the Halloween canon is Welcome to My Nightmare... Alice Cooper’s music, it was projecting as scary, terrifying, theatrical. His head would get lopped off in every performance. Like, he himself is like a pretty G-rated guy." (22:58)
• Hazel: "It's not giving the kind of cartoonish goofiness that Monster Mash gives me. There's a little edge to this song." (25:12)

4. Something New – Contemporary Additions to the Canon

Horizontes Lejanos by Oksana Linde

• Hazel: "Very creepy track that reminds me a lot of John Carpenter’s music... It feels so ethereal and weird and twisted." (26:07)

Everybody Scream by Florence and the Machine

• Stephen: "This song is pretty clearly engineered specifically to be part of the Halloween canon... she’s committed. She gives a committed vocal." (28:30)
• Robin: "This song has that borderline goofy, super theatrical kind of melodrama to it... even the organ sound at the beginning." (30:04)
• Noted that Lady Gaga’s Dead Dance is also Halloween-coded and video directed by Tim Burton. (31:18)

House of Psychotic Women by Ethel Cain

• Hazel: "Ethel is just such a master... already in her career at this very kind of specific strain of American Gothic music... It truly scares me, actually." (33:08)
• Robin: "Something that you need and you normally trust, you can’t even trust, like, you know, does that make sense? ... I've talked about, like, classic monsters. The one that to me feels the scariest is Dracula because vampirism is so intimate." (33:43)

5. Seasonal Songs (Autumnal Vibes)

We Fell in Love in October by Girl in Red

• Hazel: "Definitely not scary at all, quite cute, actually... There’s just something about this song that just... feels like wearing a soft sweater and cozying up to your crush with, like, a mug of tea in your hand." (35:34)

Bloodlines by Mimicking Birds

• Stephen: "Their music is haunted in the best way... to me, they're a great Halloween band. They're also just a great autumn band." (39:46)
• Hazel: "It’s warm and familiar, but with that unsettling aspect—a good companion to the Girl in Red song." (40:39)

Moondance by Van Morrison

• Robin: "It so evokes the season for me that it kind of feels a little too obvious. ...But maybe not. The lyrics couldn't be more on the nose for evoking fall." (41:39)
• Hazel: "There's another layer... I associate this song with An American Werewolf in London." (43:20)

6. Mount Rushmore of Halloween Songs

I Was a Teenage Werewolf by The Cramps

• Hazel: "When I think scary Halloween music, I think The Cramps... There’s a costumey ness to it, and there’s like a goofiness to it. But it’s not over the top. It’s not Party City." (44:59)

My Body’s a Zombie for You by Dead Man’s Bones

• Stephen: "I’m always shocked that one of those isn't a duo from 2009 called Dead Man's Bones... This belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Halloween music." (47:20)
• Discussion of Ryan Gosling’s evolution and musical side. (49:54, 50:04)

The Great Pumpkin Waltz by Vince Guaraldi

• Robin: "Nothing scary about this song at all. ...To me, this is absolutely the first head on the Mount Rushmore of Halloween music." (51:52)
• Hazel: "I love this music so much... this could have gone in the nostalgia bracket for me." (52:54)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Robin Hilton: “It’s the Silent Night of Halloween songs.” (14:26, on Sufjan Stevens)
• Stephen Thompson: “Halloween’s gotten too commercial, man. It used to be about the fear, man.” (11:04)
• Hazel Sills: "Just feeling like I’m being pulled into this other world." (27:57, on Oksana Linde)
• Hazel Sills: "A lot of the music that we're talking about, and it's like successful Halloween qualities... it’s very much like the trick or treat dynamic. You don’t know what you’re going to get." (40:39)
• Stephen Thompson: "The fourth head is the severed head of Alice Cooper." (50:56)

Timestamps for Key Sections

• 02:44 – The pitch: What songs actually belong in the Halloween canon?
• 03:59–07:17 – Songs that are truly terrifying: Phoebe Bridgers, Fever Ray, Sufjan Stevens
• 17:38–24:18 – Childhood nostalgia: Goosebumps, Disney Haunted House, Alice Cooper
• 26:07–34:43 – “Something new” additions: Oksana Linde, Florence and the Machine, Lady Gaga, Ethel Cain
• 35:34–44:08 – Seasonal/autumnal picks: Girl in Red, Mimicking Birds, Van Morrison
• 44:59–53:02 – The Mount Rushmore: The Cramps, Dead Man’s Bones, Vince Guaraldi

Episode Tone & Personality

• The conversation feels like a lively, playful, and thoughtful Halloween party among music nerds—with loving ribbing, nostalgia trips, and genuine delight at each other’s suggestions.
• Typical NPR wit and warmth shines through—no stuffiness, just deep affection for music, tradition, and the continually evolving canon of “spooky season.”

Takeaway

This episode is as much about what scares and delights us as what defines the spirit of Halloween: the mixture of nostalgia, genuine dread, campy fun, and autumnal romance. The team encourages listeners to expand their playlists, embrace new eerie vibes, and remember that, musically, Halloween can be about much more than “Monster Mash.”