There are many ways to scare someone through music. You can achieve that goal through an unnerving, discordant sound collage—the kind of subliminal, primal atmosphere you might encounter in a horror film. You can also creep someone out with bleak lyrics—maybe even in the context of a quiet, otherwise unfrightened folk ballad. Just like with sad songs, it’s not a “one size fits all” situation.
That freedom gives us a lot of wiggle room when assembling our “creepy music” playlists. And with Halloween on the horizon, there’s no better time to revisit this age-old question: What are the creepiest songs ever recorded? To find our answer, we’ll consult some trusted sources: expert analysis, critic picks, and opinions from the fine strangers of the Internet.
The scary data
In 2019, heavy-music bible Revolver interviewed Erik Schmidt and Steve Hogan, data analysts with Pandora’s Music Genome Project, who analyzed thousands of songs based on 450 characteristics—including instrumentation, tempo, and genre—to calculate the scariest music ever. The top pick was Nine Inch Nails’ 1994 industrial-rock track “The Becoming.”
“[T]he top moods we identified [for that song] include paranoid, bleak, gloomy, angry, ominous, confrontational and nihilistic. Some others are harsh, epic, manic and nocturnal,” said Schmidt. Hogan added, “These facets contrast with the hushed and screaming vocals, which creates a suspenseful and unsettling mood. Melodically, this song makes use of an exotic-sounding scale, which features a major third but a flat second scale degree, giving the song a dissonant quality.”
It’s safe to say people probably aren’t picking “The Becoming” for their child’s birthday party. The music is indeed tense to the point of distressing, with electronics and screams slithering over each other, only briefly relieved by a gentle acoustic guitar. And the lyrics are equally frightening, with Trent Reznor singing lines like, “It won’t give up; it want me dead / Goddamn this noise inside my head.” That mood extends through most of its parent LP. As someone on Reddit wrote, “A good portion of the album The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails is very aggressive and uncomfortable.”
The creepy songs fans agree on
If you comb through Reddit threads on this topic, including “The scariest songs you have ever heard,” you’ll find frequent references to “Frankie Teardrop,” a 1977 song by the synth-punk band Suicide. This track—once described by Rolling Stone as “the most terrifying song ever”—is so disturbing, its lyrics so violent, you could easily ruin any Halloween party by including it on your playlist (It all depends on the crowd). Regardless, it’s generally revered as a classic, despite its NSFW content: “Oh, my God! That’s one of the most amazing records I think I ever heard,” Bruce Springsteen told Rolling Stone in 1984. Redditors also agree; someone wrote, “Put some headphones on and go for a walk after sunset.”
You’ll find a lot of other staples on these lists: Pink Floyd’s psychedelic freak-out “Careful With That Axe, Eugene,” Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ pulsating murder ballad “Song of Joy,” Black Sabbath’s spooky proto-metal anthem “Black Sabbath” (of the latter, one user wrote, “This is my answer. The first time I heard it, I was stoned out of my gourd. [Creeped] me the hell out. ‘Oh no, no, please God, help me!!!!!’ Chilling”).
But one of the most consistent picks is definitely Throbbing Gristle’s 1978 piece “Hamburger Lady,” a slice of avant-garde industrial-horror that has earned its own place in the “scariest song” conversation (it appears on Rolling Stone’s list, and Far Out wrote an entire feature about it). The lyrics, as with “Frankie Teardrop,” are almost too distressing to discuss here (they involve a burn victim at a hospital), and the music is almost disorienting in its electronic wooziness. “I’ve never heard this one before, and I’m REALLY pissed at myself for listening,” one Redditor wrote. “This is the CREEPIEST sh** I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Can’t argue there.
