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Funkie Tutu Presents: Trick or Treat
25 Tracks for Halloween
There are Halloween playlists.
And then there are record collections where somebody has clearly been opening crypts.
Welcome to mine.
My Trick or Treat playlist has grown beyond 100 tracks, wandering through jazz, rock and roll, novelty records, witches, monsters, punk, goth, metal, movie music and pop. Some selections announce Halloween before the first note. Others simply carry that delicious little suggestion that something peculiar may be happening after dark.
For this Go Cybernaut Halloween gathering, I was asked to choose just 25.
Just 25.
Cruel.
So rather than picking the biggest songs or assembling another collection of Halloween standards, I decided we should take a journey.
Because Halloween music isn’t really a genre.
It’s a century-long costume party.
Come in.
The music has already started.
1. Rosemary Clooney — Punky Punkin
We begin with a pumpkin.
Naturally.
Rosemary Clooney’s Punky Punkin gives us the vintage Halloween doorway I wanted for this collection. Before Halloween playlists became dominated by movie themes, arena rock, and enormous pop records, there were charming seasonal curiosities such as this.
It feels innocent.
Don’t get comfortable.
2. Original Dixieland Jazz Band — Skeleton Jangle
Now we’re going backwards.
All the way to a recording carrying 1918 vibes in Funkie Tutu’s playlist.
Skeleton Jangle is exactly the kind of discovery that makes digging through old music so rewarding. Long before Halloween became a pop-music category, musicians were already finding rhythms for rattling bones.
Apparently skeletons have always understood the importance of a good beat.
3. Glenn Miller & His Orchestra — Swingin’ at the Seance
Someone has moved the furniture.
Someone else has dimmed the lights.
And apparently the spirits have requested swing.
Swingin’ at the Séance is one of those titles that makes my job ridiculously easy. Jazz, ghosts and dancing belong together far more naturally than anyone has adequately explained.
If we’re going to contact the other side, we might as well give them something worth coming back for.
4. Duke Ellington — Night Creature (Second Movement): Stalking Monster
Halloween doesn’t always need a joke.
Sometimes it needs shadows.
Duke Ellington’s Night Creature changes the atmosphere immediately. The party becomes nocturnal, sophisticated, and slightly dangerous.
This is an important part of our 25 because Halloween music shouldn’t be reduced to novelty songs about monsters.
Sometimes the monster doesn’t sing.
Sometimes it stalks.
5. Zacherley — Dinner With Drac
Now we can get silly again.
Enter Zacherley.
Any serious excavation of vintage monster music eventually seems to uncover him, and Dinner With Drac is exactly where our elegant shadows turn back into theatrical Halloween fun.
Dinner is served.
I have decided not to inquire about the entrée.
6. The Zanies — The Mad Scientist
Every respectable Halloween gathering needs laboratory equipment.
Preferably bubbling.
Possibly glowing.
Almost certainly violating several municipal regulations.
The Mad Scientist takes us directly into the wonderful world of monster novelty records, where science becomes strange, the equipment starts sparking and nobody thinks to locate the emergency exit until much too late.
And suddenly Halloween plugs in the amplifier.
The Witch brings garage-rock grit into our gathering. The monsters and mad scientists haven’t gone anywhere, but the musical world around them has changed.
That transformation is part of what fascinates me about Halloween music.
Every generation gets the same box of costumes.
Every generation does something different with them.
8. October Country — My Girlfriend Is a Witch
Well, that’s awkward.
October Country gives us psychedelia, romance and witchcraft in one wonderfully Halloween-ready package.
This is another reason I didn’t want these 25 selections to become simply “the hits.” The joy of a deep playlist is encountering records that make you stop and wonder where they’ve been hiding.
Somewhere, presumably, with his girlfriend.
Who is a witch.
9. Redbone — The Witch Queen of New Orleans
Our witches aren’t finished.
The Witch Queen of New Orleans brings a completely different energy into the collection and demonstrates how supernatural storytelling can slip comfortably into popular music without needing a Halloween label attached to it.
That’s an important Funkie Tutu rule:
A song doesn’t need a pumpkin on the sleeve to belong at Halloween.
Sometimes atmosphere gets you through the door.
Monster.
One word.
That will do nicely.
By now we’ve travelled through vintage seasonal music, early jazz, swing, monster novelty records, garage rock and witches.
Monster jumps us forward again.
Halloween keeps changing clothes.
The creature underneath remains remarkably familiar.
11. Steve Miller Band — Abracadabra
Magic words count.
Abracadabra isn’t dependent upon Halloween, and that’s precisely why I wanted it here. A good seasonal playlist becomes much more interesting when you stop demanding that every song explicitly mention October 31.
Magic, mystery and a little seduction can enter the party too.
Besides, after witches and mad scientists, surely someone should know an incantation.
12. Rockwell — Somebody’s Watching Me
Have you ever had that feeling?
Of course you haven’t.
There’s nobody behind you.
Probably.
Somebody’s Watching Me takes Halloween away from monsters and into paranoia. That’s a different flavour of spooky altogether, and one that works brilliantly in a collection like this.
Ghosts are one thing.
The feeling that you aren’t alone is another.
13. Alice Cooper — Welcome to My Nightmare
Thank you, Alice.
Lovely place.
Interesting décor.
At this point in our Halloween evening, the invitation becomes explicit. Welcome to My Nightmare doesn’t hover around the edges of darkness. It opens the door and invites us inside.
So we enter.
This may prove unwise.
14. Edgar Winter Group — Frankenstein
We couldn’t possibly come this far without Frankenstein.
Better yet, we get a monster without needing a lyrical story at all.
The title does the introducing.
The music does the rest.
Halloween playlists need instrumentals because sometimes words get in the way. Let the creature lumber around the laboratory for a while.
He’s earned it.
Apparently Frankenstein found transportation.
Dragula pushes our night into much heavier territory and demonstrates just how far popular monster music travelled from those early novelty records.
The old ingredients remain.
Monsters. Horror. Theatre. Darkness.
The volume knob, however, has suffered consequences.
16. Ozzy Osbourne — Crazy Train
All aboard.
No, I don’t know where we’re going either.
At this stage Funkie Tutu is no longer accepting responsibility for the itinerary.
Crazy Train isn’t a conventional Halloween novelty song. It doesn’t need to be. Its enormous rock energy gives this section of our journey momentum before we head somewhere much darker.
Tickets, please.
17. Blue Öyster Cult — (Don’t Fear) The Reaper
And now the party changes.
Halloween isn’t only costumes and candy. It has always danced around mortality, darkness, endings, and our peculiar human ability to turn the things that frighten us into stories, rituals, art, and music.
(Don’t Fear) The Reaper gives our playlist room to acknowledge that darker side.
No rubber bats required.
18. The Cure — One Hundred Years
The lights have gone down.
We’re entering the goth corridor.
The Cure brings a different sort of darkness to our Halloween gathering, far removed from dancing skeletons and novelty monsters.
This is where a playlist becomes a mood rather than a theme.
Halloween has room for both.
19. The Clash — City of the Dead
Keep walking.
We’ve reached the city.
The Clash takes us through another musical doorway, because Halloween and punk make perfectly good companions. There is something beautifully appropriate about refusing to keep spooky music tidy.
Halloween was never particularly interested in tidy.
There are titles that simply arrive wearing their own Halloween costume.
Pet Sematary is one.
By this point we’ve travelled a very long way from Punky Punkin, yet the journey still makes sense.
That’s the trick.
Halloween music evolves, but its fascination with death, monsters, outsiders, fear, humour and the strange remains remarkably durable.
21. The Rocky Horror Picture Show — Time Warp
Enough brooding.
Everybody up.
You cannot leave Funkie Tutu in charge of a Halloween collection and expect everyone to remain seated.
Time Warp is where the room becomes communal again. Halloween has always contained an invitation to become someone else for a few hours, step outside ordinary life and join the spectacle.
So dance.
It’s just a jump to the left…
You know the rest.
22. Warren Zevon — Werewolves of London
Some records barely need an introduction.
A few notes arrive and the Halloween decorations seem to assemble themselves.
Werewolves of London gives us humour, character and one of popular music’s most recognizable supernatural visitors.
Our monster population is becoming quite substantial.
Please don’t feed them.
23. Ray Parker Jr. — Ghostbusters
Who are you going to call?
No, don’t answer.
We have reached one of those glorious points where Halloween music and pop culture become almost impossible to separate.
Ghostbusters is playful, instantly recognizable and wonderfully communal.
Halloween needs songs people can share.
This is one of them.
24. Vince Guaraldi — The Great Pumpkin Waltz
And then…
quiet.
This may be my favourite transition in our entire collection.
After witches, monsters, nightmares, werewolves, punk, goth, ghosts and a considerable amount of questionable behaviour, Vince Guaraldi gives us autumn.
Not horror.
Not spectacle.
Just that unmistakable feeling of the season.
Leaves.
Cool evenings.
Childhood.
Pumpkins waiting in the dark.
Halloween has tenderness too.
Before our final track, I wanted us to remember that.
Take a moment.
Look outside.
October is here.
25. Michael Jackson — Thriller
There was really only one place left to go.
The doors open.
The creatures return.
The dance floor fills.
And Thriller closes our journey.
After travelling through decades of music, from old jazz and monster novelties through garage rock, psychedelia, goth, punk, metal, movies and pop, we arrive at a song that somehow contains so many pieces of Halloween’s musical DNA in one place.
Theatre.
Horror.
Humour.
Dance.
Monsters.
And an irresistible invitation to join them.
Turn it up.
Halloween Keeps Changing Costumes
That’s my 25.
And looking across them reveals something I love about this peculiar musical tradition.
Halloween music isn’t a genre.
There is no single Halloween sound.
Instead, musicians keep borrowing the imagery of Halloween and carrying it into whatever music they’re making.
Jazz gets skeletons.
Swing gets séances.
Rock and roll gets monsters.
Garage rock gets witches.
Psychedelia gets magic.
Goth gets darkness.
Punk gets the dead.
Metal gets nightmares.
Movies give us ghosts.
Pop gets everybody dancing together.
And somewhere between all of them sits Halloween itself, happily trying on every costume.
That’s why my Trick or Treat playlist grew beyond 100 tracks.
I wasn’t collecting one kind of music.
I was following an idea through music.
A century of artists have encountered ghosts, witches, monsters, graveyards, pumpkins, death, magic, fear and things that go bump in the night and asked the same important question:
What would this sound like?
Their answers are wonderfully different.
These are 25 of mine.
But there are plenty more lurking in the playlist.
After all…
you didn’t really think Funkie Tutu’s crypt only had one room, did you?
🎃 🎶 👻
Happy Halloween from Funkie Tutu and Go Cybernaut.
DJ Funkie TuTu is the original Cybernaut of groove, glitter, and grit. Spinning joy since the ’70s, she’s known for her outrageous hats, poetic rhymes, and unstoppable beats that lift spirits from the ashes to the disco ball. Whether she’s lighting up dancefloors or dropping wisdom in rhyme, TuTu reminds us that music is medicine—and we were all born to boogie. You can find her on SoundCloud, YouTube, TikTok, and anywhere rhythm rebels gather.
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