Recommendation of Scary Music: That Song That’s Actually Frightening
One facet of music as an art form is that it can evoke fear—just hearing it can send chills down your spine.
In this article, we’re spotlighting a range of pieces under the theme of scary music.
From classic horror movie theme songs to classical music at the core, plus rock and popular music, we’ve curated a wide selection! Some tracks might not seem particularly scary when you’re just listening, but once you learn the backstory, they suddenly become terrifying… You might make discoveries like that.
Be sure to check it out!
- A spine-chilling scary song: masterful tracks that evoke fear and eerie recommended songs
- Actually scary nursery rhymes. Children's songs that give you the chills once you understand their meaning
- A fearsome and beautiful masterpiece: Themes from terrifying film scores
- Disgusting music. A classic of Japanese pop/rock.
- [Dark Side] Songs with scary lyrics. Tracks that make you shiver with chilling phrases.
- [So touching it makes you cry] A heartbreakingly wistful and sad song that tightens your chest
- BGM for a haunted house. Scary music.
- Chills down your spine. A collection of Vocaloid songs that are scary but irresistibly listenable.
- A roundup of love songs themed around homosexuality and LGBTQ+
- Anime songs to listen to on Halloween: Theme and insert songs from anime about yokai and ghosts
- A spine-chilling, terrifying song. Japanese music that evokes madness and horror.
- [Classical] Recommended classical music perfect for Halloween
- “Song of War”: A classic that sings of the tragedy and folly of war
Recommendation of Terrifying Music: Actually Scary Songs (1–10)
AEnimaTool
Tool’s masterpiece “Ænima.” The soundscape unfolds like wandering into a complex labyrinth: the vocals start restrained and gradually intensify, and as the song alternates between ferocity and calm, it keeps sinking deeper into an abyss.
Eerily repeating phrases, suddenly blooming beautiful melodies, hypnotic refrains, murmurs and shouts—the whole world is dark art and an intricate puzzle.
Listen to it several times and let yourself get trapped in its depths, unable to return.
ErlkönigFranz Schubert
Just listening to the weighty, serious timbre of the piano lets you experience an inexpressible sense of anxiety and impatience, doesn’t it? One of the most internationally renowned Lieder, Erlkönig, is best known in the version where Schubert set Goethe’s poem to music.
Based on a Danish folk ballad, Goethe freely reworked it and published the poem in 1782; Schubert then composed it as a song in 1815 when he was 18.
However, the true value of the piece was not readily understood, and its path to publication was fraught with twists and turns.
Today, it is well known in Japan as an educational piece in music and is frequently parodied and quoted in various contexts.
In addition to the overwhelming piano part that seems to push the terror of its tragic story to the utmost limit, the technical difficulty—where a single singer typically assumes four roles (the child, the father, the Erlking, and the narrator)—combines to leave listeners with an unforgettable impact after just one hearing.
Symphony No. 9Ludwig van Beethoven
It’s probably the most famous staple of classical music in Japan.
Better known as “the Ninth,” Beethoven’s Symphony No.
9 is also regarded as an indispensable piece for year-end concerts in Japan.
There are likely very few people who haven’t heard the “Ode to Joy” in the fourth movement.
Although Beethoven himself didn’t give it a title, the number nine simply indicates that it was the ninth symphony he composed.
So what’s scary about this famous classical work? After composing it, Beethoven died, and in later generations a rumor spread among composers known as the “curse of the ninth symphony,” the fear that composing a ninth would cost you your life.
It’s largely an urban legend, but there’s a real anecdote that Mahler, mindful of this, titled his tenth symphonic work “Das Lied von der Erde” (The Song of the Earth).
With that background in mind, listening to it might give you a little shiver… perhaps?
Recommendation of terrifying music: Actually scary songs (11–20)
Cannibal HolocaustRiz Ortolani
If anything, this is the very first song I want people who don’t know the background to hear.
The warm acoustic guitar phrases, the unhurried, calming rhythm, and the melody carried by flowing strings are so beautiful that they’re sure to soothe the hearts of listeners who come to it fresh.
That said, this only applies to those who truly know nothing about it.
Composed by the renowned Italian composer Riz Ortolani, this piece, Cannibal Holocaust, is the theme for the notorious 1980 film of the same Japanese release title, “Shokujin-zoku” (Cannibal Tribe), which also caused quite a stir in Japan at the time.
Once you learn that, many of you will wonder why such a beautiful theme was used for a film with a title like that.
There’s a deliberate technique of pairing shock or horror films with unexpectedly beautiful theme music, and this track is a quintessential example.
The song plays repeatedly over some truly outrageous scenes in the film, and the overlap of the gorgeous melody with the terrifying imagery creates an intensely striking effect.
The film itself isn’t something I can generally recommend, but… if you’re curious, by all means!
TotentanzFranz Liszt
The mysterious yet ominous atmosphere conjured by the profoundly weighty piano is truly unique to this piece.
Composed by Franz Liszt—dubbed the “magician of the piano” for his transcendental virtuosity—it is also known in Japan by the title “Dance of Death.” Here’s where it gets a bit complicated: although it shares the Japanese title “Dance of Death” with Saint-Saëns’s famous symphonic poem, it is an entirely different work.
Moreover, Liszt himself, inspired by Saint-Saëns’s Danse macabre, created a solo piano arrangement of the Saint-Saëns piece, separate from his own original work of the same Japanese title.
The piece introduced here is Liszt’s composition titled Totentanz in the original German, presented in his own solo piano arrangement.
It incorporates phrases from the Gregorian chant Dies irae, and the contrast between its tranquil and tempestuous sections is strikingly beautiful and dramatic.
Why not listen to it while contemplating the 14th-century fresco The Triumph of Death, said to have inspired its motif?
Careful With That Axe, EugenePink Floyd
It’s a masterpiece that lets you experience an indescribable kind of fear—completely different from the intentionally staged terror of background music! It’s a hidden early gem by Pink Floyd, the pinnacle of British progressive rock and a band that also achieved record-breaking commercial success.
The song first appeared as the B-side to the UK single “Point Me at the Sky,” released in 1968.
Even though it was a B-side, it was frequently performed live at the time, which shows how important a place it held in their repertoire.
It’s packed with the psychedelic atmosphere characteristic of their early work, and the impact of the moment when bassist and vocalist Roger Waters suddenly lets out a scream as if he’s gone mad is absolutely staggering.
Also note that it was re-recorded and included in the soundtrack to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 masterpiece Zabriskie Point under the new title “Come in Number 51 (Your Time Is Up).”
Gloomy SundayBillie Holiday
In Europe and America, “Gloomy Sunday” is famous as the anthem of suicide.
There’s an urban legend that, when people listened to it back in the day, suicides occurred around the world, which helped make the song notorious.
Since its release in 1935, it has been covered by numerous artists up to the present and sung in various languages, including Hungarian and French.
In Japan, the notable covers tend to come from singers influenced by chanson; it’s fun to compare the different versions, from Fubuki Koshiji to Mari Natsuki!