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The Most Frightening Or Unnerving Song

Talking of traditional songs, I always found the lyrics to that old standard, She Moved Through the Fair, to be distinctly spooky - certainly the last verse. And I think if the song is performed well you just know that the last verse (and those last two lines...ulp) is coming even before you've sussed that this isn't a straightforward love-song.

I remember the first time I heard it thinking almost straight away: 'this sounds like it's a love song, but it feels like a ghost story'.

Lyrics here.
 
Spookdaddy said:
Talking of traditional songs, I always found the lyrics to that old standard, She Moved Through the Fair, to be distinctly spooky - certainly the last verse. And I think if the song is performed well you just know that the last verse (and those last two lines...ulp) is coming even before you've sussed that this isn't a straightforward love-song.

I remember the first time I heard it thinking almost straight away: 'this sounds like it's a love song, but it feels like a ghost story'.

Lyrics here.

Sinéad O'Connor sings She Moved Through the Fair as Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts) is picking her wedding dress as Michael Collins (Liam Neeson) drives to his death in the film Michael Collins (1996).
 
paulsamfreya said:
giantrobot1 said:
Seeker_UK said:

I love Mr P. Orridge's weird droning voice.

As for industrial, SPK managed to give me a night terror once.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZWmYEUo ... re=related

:shock:

Christ that SPK track is an awful noise but I suppose that was the point!!
:_omg:

It's amazing that the whole industrial/noise scene kicked off about 30 years ago and I don't think it's been beaten in terms of aggressiveness and commentary.

Interesting to see what SPK's Graeme Revell has been up to since music wise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Revell
 
Honestly, the one song that gives me the galloping shudders is from the opera "Carmen." I can't remember the title, which is just as well.
 
Not where i was expecting a pretty un-nerving song to come from, but i came across this one by accident last night while zipping through some Sydney Carter stuff on youtube:

The Crow on the Cradle

Unusually for Carter, it seems quite heavily covered too.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
Not where i was expecting a pretty un-nerving song to come from, but i came across this one by accident last night while zipping through some Sydney Carter stuff on youtube:

The Crow on the Cradle

Unusually for Carter, it seems quite heavily covered too.

Greta song, fab version by Show of Hands available.
 
Greta song, fab version by Show of Hands available.

I wasn't too sure about that one, or maybe the audio is just poor on their live examples.

Try the SandWitch version. They cook sausages while recording it!
 
giantrobot1 said:
It's amazing that the whole industrial/noise scene kicked off about 30 years ago and I don't think it's been beaten in terms of aggressiveness and commentary.
But it’s impossible to beat sheer noise for aggressiveness
 
Let's not forget the "suicide song," "Gloomy Sunday."

And the early Bing Crosby songs "Black Moonlight" and "I have to Pass Your House on the Way to My House."
 
I've listened to the various songs in this thread, but nothing is quite what I'm looking for so I'd like ask for your help folks :)

I need to find a bit of music for a play I'm helping with. Probably classical (or at least instrumental), and faintly creepy/ominous rather than overwhelmingly menacing. Sort of like background music in Hell's waiting room, that kind of thing.

Any suggestions?
 
CarlosTheDJ said:
James_H2 said:
I once found a CD which was basically 'classical music for sex' - it had the Carmina Burana on it. That mental image really cracked me up :D
The Old Spice effect.
Assuming we're talking about the same track - that is, O Fortuna, from Carmina Burana - it's strange what an effect it has. Yes, it can sound highly dramatic, and thus found its way into said advert, but it's also quite unnerving if you listen too hard. So much so that people think it was in The Omen, even though it wasn't...

Anyway, for anyone looking for slightly unnerving music, and with apologies to the Queenophobes, I give you Roger Taylor's Fun In Space. It's a bit odd, and rather depressing, but that's why I like it! Needless to say (given my avatar, that is), I like a lot of Taylor's solo work, but anyone expecting Queen-like campery may well come away from it baffled and close to tears, for any number of reasons...
 
I've recently dl'd the Beloved Aunt album 'From Indian Head to Ashland' that was in FT last month and it's very, VERY creepy. In fact my 13 year old son refuses to be in the same room if I'm playing it. It's not even really my genre of music, but I'd highly recommend it.
 
beakboo said:
Benjamin Britten's Playful Pizzicato freaks me out a bit. I don't know what's supposed to be playful about it, to me it sounds like the incidental music to a film where giant intelligent arachnoid aliens take over the earth, laying waste all before them. Perhaps that's just me.

It always makes me think of Morris dancers (Which, I suppose, might be horrifying to some people......) :)
 
There's also things to be said for the old cowboy classic "That Hell-Bound Train."

And I've always found the late 1940s Vaughn Monroe hit "Ghost Riders in the Sky" rather chilling.
 
I nominate Why Don't You Eat Carrots? from the first album by the German band Faust.
 
I think I'd nominate "In every Dream home a Heartache" by Roxy Music. Something about the chord progression is a just a little off beam and that's before we get what the subject matter of the song is.

On a slightly different slant, the intro to Deep Purple's "Space Truckin'" heard live/at full volume does have something a bit primal in it. 8)
 
In Every Dream Home A Heartache, yup, that's one of the creepiest songs ever. Funny though. :lol:

We had longish discussion about Realdolls on here a couple of years back and that song often sprang to mind. :D
 
We Could Leave Right Now by Oysterband.

The lyrics (http://bob.bofh.org/~giolla/oysterband/WCLRN.html) are fairly innocuous, but the arrangement - Ye Gods!

The screamimg violin!...The screaming violin solo!.... The chant of "don't be afraid......don't be afraid.." in a robotic monotone under the solo! :shock:

A song for swingin' serial killers..
 
And how about the incomparable Norman Greenbaum with "Spirit in the Sky" - nice if holy-roller lyrics backed up with an absolutely unnerving, apocalyptic guitar drive.


Still want it played at my funeral though :)
 
myf13 said:
I've listened to the various songs in this thread, but nothing is quite what I'm looking for so I'd like ask for your help folks :)

I need to find a bit of music for a play I'm helping with. Probably classical (or at least instrumental), and faintly creepy/ominous rather than overwhelmingly menacing. Sort of like background music in Hell's waiting room, that kind of thing.

Any suggestions?
Lisa Gerrard's The Silver Tree is one of the most haunting/melancholy albums I've heard. It is the perfect accompaniment to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which is very bleak reading. Gerrard was half of the group Dead Can Dance. Here's a bit from the Wikipedia:
Vocal style

Lisa Gerrard has a contralto vocal range.[3] Her vocals have been variously described as rich, jaw-dropping, unique, deep, dark, and mournful.[4][5][6] Her range spans from contralto to mezzo-soprano on such songs as The Host of Seraphim, Elegy, and Space Weaver.[7][8] On the other songs Sanvean and Sacrifice, Gerrard performs in the lower contralto range.[9][10]

Gerrard sings many of her songs, such as Now We Are Free and Sanvean in an idioglossia (an idiosyncratic language) that she has developed since the age of twelve.
 
Ohhh, the soundtrack from "A Clockwork Orange" my Dad tried to play it in the car once when my brother and i were little and there was much hysterical screaming until it was turned off! We didn't know anything about the film at the time!
My brother always used to scream when "Thriller" by Michael Jackson was played and "Mama" by Genesis had the same effect! He hated the maniacal laughing! "Macavity" in Cats too!
Personally "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers always makes my hair stand on end! Mainly because I woke up humming it one morning when i was about 13, turned on the radio and it was playing! Would like to mention at this point that it was at least a decade after the song was released, it had not been played at all on the radio station that i listened to in any of the preceding months and i had never really heard it properly before as Mum and Dad were more BeeGees and Carpenters than Strangler fans!
 
tillybean1 said:
Mainly because I woke up humming it one morning when i was about 13, turned on the radio and it was playing!

That sort of thing happens to me with alarming regularity... hope there's a thread on it!
 
In Every Dream Home A Heartache, yup, that's one of the creepiest songs ever. Funny though. Laughing

if i'm not mistaken it was covered by Fields of the Nephilim, i think it's a 12" B-side, i hadn;t heard the Roxy Music version and tbh the Neph version never grabbed me enough top stick in my mind, but it rings a bell, as it were.

i'd nip down and check but the turntable isn;t set up at the mo.
 
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