Halloween is one of the most fun holidays for oh so many reasons, but one of my absolute favorite reasons is the music! Christmas has a whole lot of wonderful songs written specifically for it and it's easy to saturate yourself in it, but Halloween runs a close second with the plethora of songs it has going for it. What makes Halloween even more fun, though, is that not all Halloween music is about Halloween itself, in fact most of it isn't. Sure, there's a fair share of Halloween tracks that are campy, cheesy fun about the holiday itself, but the majority of songs associated with Halloween are simply about spooky things. Whether it's werewolves, ghosts, ghouls, and monsters of all kind, or it's things in the dark, a general creepy vibe, or gruesome murderous events, there is so much music out there depicting things that for sure belong in anything Halloween-related. Hunting it all down is nearly impossible, but collecting a decent list of new things every year is one of my favorite ways to get into the Halloween spirit. It's easy to throw Rocky Horror, Thriller, Monster Mash, and some other favorites on a playlist, but that's cliche. So here's a list of 8 essential tracks for your future Halloween playlist, but not the 8 you might be expecting.

While these eight tracks may be an absolute tour de force to make your party tunes stand out from everyone else's cliche, campy, overdone playlists, that doesn't mean you should be discouraged from adding those same cliche, campy, overdone tracks to your playlist along with these songs. Monster Mash wouldn't be such a timeless bop if it wasn't so good, so don't worry if it plays a few times over the course of the night while you're shuffling through some other, more niche selections you may have picked. For a nice jumble of all sorts of Halloween songs from all sorts of sonic directions, check out this Spotify playlist I made to get myself and my friends into the mood as well, maybe it'll help you further formulate yours!