20 Scariest Songs Of All Time

Feature Photo: A.PAES / Shutterstock.com

It would be easy to fill out our list of the 20 Scariest Songs of all time with heavy metal. There are so many metal songs from the genres of doom metal, death metal, and so on that would fit the bill rather nicely. But that is just too easy. Of course, one also has to determine what we mean by the term scary. Scariest does not always have to be bathed in the horror genre. I had some nuns back in a Catholic school in the 1960s that were scarier than any Vincent Price movie I have seen. Scary can mean many things. So, let’s see where this takes us.

# 20 – Welcome To My Nightmare – Alice Cooper

Who else but Alice Cooper should start off this list of scary songs? Yes, we know it’s all an act, and Alice Cooper is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, but I heard so were Vincent Price and also the actor who plays Freddy Krueger. Yet you watch their art on screen, and you can’t sleep for long. Alice Cooper is the perfect artist to scare the coffee out of you.

This was the title track of his 1975 album Welcome to My Nightmare. That album spawned the huge hit Only Women Bleed. The title sounds like it fits, but the song is actually pretty sweet, and it doesn’t belong on this list. No, this list deserves the title cut. The creepiness begins from the moment we hear that first guitar lick, and it just gets scarier and scarier and scarier. For more kicks, watch the video below. Sleep well, my Little Darlings…….

# 19 – Tubular Bells (Theme From The Exorcist) – Mike Oldfield

We could have put a lot of movie themes on this list, but we’re going to stay away from movie themes unless they were songs that stood on their own. This one was actually released as a single. Imagine that: a single from what’s probably the scariest movie ever. I remember seeing the film by myself in a movie theater when I was like 12 years old. What was I thinking?

My friend’s mother managed the movie theater, and everybody knew me there, so I always got in for free, and they would give me the movie posters too. This was one poster I didn’t want. What is so fascinating about the movie is that anyone who grew up in the 70s and saw it for the first time still feels scared when they see it. That fear never goes away. Yet I watched it with my 20-year-old son the other day, who was seeing it for the first time, and he just laughed at it.

# 18 – D.O.A. – Bloodrock

What I always found so frightening about this song was just how believable it sounded. Between the sirens, the lyrics, the music, and the performance, it was all incredibly horrifying. What makes this piece of music so frightening is that it could happen to any of us at any time, and the pain, agony, and fear of the central character are things we never want to experience. This song reminds us of how bad it can get. So enjoy that pizza every day, smile when you drink a cup of coffee, and don’t take the sound of birds for granted.

# 17 – Evil Never Dies – Judas Priest

You knew we’d eventually get to the metal genre. Oh, but where to start? Well, you can’t go wrong with Judas Priest. This one has it all: hard-hitting, hair-raising guitars, nightmarish lyrics, and, of course, a spine-tingling vocal performance by Rob Halford. The song “Evil Never Dies” was released on the Firepower album. Beware of this one because “there is voodoo in the night.”

# 16 – Dead Skin Mask – Slayer

I think there’s a pattern here. Many of the songs on this list share one thing in common. Not all of them, but some of the scariest ones on this list share spoken-word parts. Those are the moments that give us the willies. Another pattern is that these songs are about true stories. Because it just makes it even more real, it makes it even more possible that somehow… well, you know what I mean.

# 15 – Wreck On The Highway – Bruce Springsteen

A lot of people pick Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska as his scariest song. Because, of course, it’s all about the subject matter of the main character, which I’m not going to get into right here. Another pattern I see developing throughout this list is that some of the scariest songs aren’t based on horror or the supernatural, but on the scariest things that can happen to us in everyday life. And of course, maybe the most common thing that happens to everybody is car crashes. Springsteen paints a vivid picture of a car crash in this one, where the outcome is bad. That is real fear because it could happen to any one of us on any given day, at any moment.

# 14 – Hammer Horror – Kate Bush

Kate Bush stands as one of the most brilliant artists of the past 50 years. While she was huge in Europe, she never really got the fame she deserved here in the States. It was wonderful to see her gain more fame in the U.S. recently when one of her songs played a central role in the Netflix series Stranger Things. It brought her a brand new younger audience that fell in love with her music. Her brilliance comes from her originality and the voice she uses to deliver it.

This song showcases that brilliant mind. A song of horror, a song of haunting, a song of guilt. It’s about the emotional guilt an actor feels after taking the lead role in a play because the actor who had it died. And it’s the actor who passed on who now haunts the new lead.

# 13 – Trouble’s Lament – Tori Amos

It felt right to continue this list of scary songs by following up Kate Bush with a Tori Amos song. There is definitely a connection between these two artists. You can hear how inspiring Kate Bush’s music was in Tori Amos’s music and artistry. It’s just my opinion, and maybe it wasn’t, but I think you can hear it.

This is a fascinating song. The music itself may not be that scary at first; it’s almost country-popish, but just as you start to feel comfortable, an eeriness filters in, and then you hear Tori Amos’s words. And if you watch the video, there are moments when she looks directly into the camera, and it is very unsettling and somehow quite beautiful at the same time. This is fascinating, just like the rest of her music.

# 12 – Do You Doubt Me Traitor – Lingua Ignota

This one, yes, this one, may be just a little bit too difficult to listen to. Unless, of course, you love scary stuff. Her performance may be the best one on this list. This song is about surviving, and a lot of other stuff that I don’t want to get too much into here. The song opens with a piano riff, and the percussion clearly signals this won’t be a sweet ride. It’s probably the most intense screaming I’ve ever heard. And it lasts a pretty long time. This epic 9-minute-plus masterpiece is mesmerizing because she walks through the audience, and it’s not just watching her; it’s watching their reactions. This is deeply scary.

# 11 – Come To Daddy – Aphex Twin

This one wins the creepiest one of them all award. And it’s interesting because the music itself is not that creepy. It’s pretty much EDM. What’s creepy, and genuinely scary, is the vocal. The video doesn’t help either. In fact, I watched this video once, and once is enough. Some super scary moments would make you turn on the lights and try to find a baseball game or something to watch instead.

# 10 – I Love The Dead – Alice Cooper

In Alice Cooper’s “I Love The Dead,” just the opening line alone will have you pulling the sheets over your head. The song was released on the album entitled Billion Dollar Babies. The album was released in 1973. The Billion Dollar Babies album was a massive success for Alice Cooper as it went all the way to number one on the Billboard 200 album chart. The album was filled with many hits, from “Elected” to the title track. Yet Alice Cooper saved the creepiest one of them all, “I Love The Dead,” to close the album out.

# 9 – What’s He Building? – Tom Waits

When putting together this list of the scariest rock songs of all time, Tom Waits’ song “What’s He Building?” was the first one to come to mind. It’s almost difficult to call it a song, as it’s more of a spoken-word performance. There is really no melody or chord changes. It is a perfect spoken word performance surrounded by incredibly creepy sound effects. Nonetheless, it is Tom Waits’ spine-tingling delivery and lyrics that set a horrifying scene. Does this guy live next door to you?

# 8 – Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner – Warren Zevon

There is something very unsettling about listening to Warren Zevon’s “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.” It’s a fictional story, but Warren’s delivery makes it sound like it really happened. The fact that this was Warren Zevon’s last song performed publicly before he died also adds to the song’s legacy.

# 7 – The Mercy Seat – Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash recorded many dark songs throughout his career that we could have included on this list. However, his cover of Nick Cave and Mick Harvey’s “The Mercy Seat” is one of the most daunting songs he ever recorded. Nick Cave plays a major role in this because, of course, he co-wrote the song, while the sparse piano and organ accompaniment goes head to head emotionally with Johnny Cash’s spell-binding vocal. You get the sense that Johnny Cash is not just singing about the character in this one, or was he just that good? This one is intense.

# 6 – Me and the Devil Blues – Robert Johnson

Landing in the number six spot on our 20 Scariest Songs In Rock Music list, we present the Robert Johnson classic. This one is scary because it feels so real. Robert Johnson wakes up one morning to find the devil at his door. He walks with him side by side. It is all a metaphor, of course, but it is what the devil is going to make him do and who he has become that is horrifying.

# 5 – The Monster Is Loose – Meat Loaf

To complete the Bat Out of Hell trilogy, Meat Loaf released the third and final chapter, Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, in 2006. This came out 29 years after Bat Out of Hell and 13 years after Bat Out of Hell II. Because so much time had passed, interest in the third chapter was probably lower. That’s sad because Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose was a really good album. The difference on III was that Meat Loaf used multiple songwriters, rather than just Jim Steinman.

The opening track and the one that was placed on this list, “The Monster Is Loose,” was written by John 5, Desmond Child, and Nikki Sixx. The opening instrumental of “The Monster Is Loose” is fueled by a sort of comic book terror. It’s a lot of fun, almost Alice Cooper-like. Meat Loaf’s vocal performance is dead-on perfect, with a scary intensity surrounded by creepy background vocal effects.

# 4 – The End – The Doors

This song was scary from the moment I first heard it. The middle section, that spoken-word section, is the ultimate Freudian nightmare. But as scary as it was when we first learned it, what happened 10 years later, what Francis Ford Coppola did with this music and how he put it in Apocalypse Now, turned it into a legend. That film also renewed interest in the Doors’ music. In fact, I think the Doors became bigger in the late ’70s and early ’80s because of this film than they were in the 60s. Everywhere you went, every nightclub had Doors tribute bands. I know I was in one of them, although we weren’t that good.

# 3 – Fear of the Dark – Iron Maiden

One can’t put together a scary song list without adding at least one Iron Maiden song. The band really nailed the horror genre on this one. Yet, it is more of a psychological thriller based on paranoia than sheer horror. The first time we hear the lyric “I have a phobia that someone is always there,” the band breaks out into an intense jam that multiplies the meaning of the lyrics by 10. That’s how you do it.

# 2 – Careful with That Axe, Eugene – Pink Floyd

The repeating bass line that opens the song puts the listener in a trance instantly. Of course, there is no musical instrument creepier than an organ that jumps into the picture, spinning around the bass line. Then there are those screams by Roger Waters that bounce off David Gilmour’s grisly guitar lines. The fact that there are almost no lyrics makes it even more troubling because, with a title like that, along with the instrumental music, one’s own imagination can lead to more horrifying thoughts than any song’s lyrics could.

# 1 – Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath

This one is terrifying just looking at the album cover before you even place the vinyl on your turntable. I have never heard a more disturbing song in rock music than Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath.” When Ozzy sings, “Oh no, no, please God help me,” that’s it. I’m done. Turn the lights back on, change the channel, do something, and just get me out of here. But of course, it is just so good, in such a troubling, compelling way, you can’t stop listening to it. Please help me.