Happy Halloween! I know this is a controversial holiday for some, and not everyone chooses to celebrate it. But I'm not one of those people, so here goes a collection of Halloween-themed songs. In most cases, the song isn't intended to be a Halloween-oriented song, it just happens to have a word in its title that could be associated with this most ghoulish of days. Enjoy! (Or don't. It's all the same to me.) ~ JH
1) Ne-Yo ~ "Beautiful Monster"
2) The Cranberries ~ "Zombie"
3) Michael Jackson ~ "Ghost"
4) Eagles ~ "Witchy Woman"
5) Annie Lennox ~ "Love Song For A Vampire"
6) Imagine Dragons ~ "Demons"
7) Matchbook Romance ~ "Monsters"
8) Panic! At The Disco ~ "It's Almost Halloween"
9) Tegan And Sara ~ "Walking With A Ghost"
10) Family Force 5 ~ "Zombie"
11) Donovan ~ "Season Of The Witch"
12) Skillet ~ "Monster"
13) The Citizens Of Halloween ~ "This Is Halloween" (from The Nightmare Before Christmas)
14) Fefe Dobson ~ "Ghost"
15) Red Sky Mary ~ "Red Witch"
16) Paramore ~ "Monster"
17) Jonathan Coulton ~ "Creepy Doll"
18) Queens Of The Stone Age ~ "Burn The Witch"
19) Yeah Yeah Yeahs ~ "Skeletons"
20) Lindsey Stirling ~ "Phantom Of The Opera Medley"
BONUS TRACK – Bobby Pickett ~ "Monster Mash" (What Halloween song collection would be complete without this campy gem?)
In case you didn't see or read yesterday's post, I'll recap the intro as succinctly as I can. A mononym is "a one-word name by which a person is known." Many singers, songwriters, and musicians in the industry are (or have historically been) commonly known by a single name. Yesterday, I posted a collection of songs by mononymous female singers. Today, it's the singularly-named guys' turn. Enjoy! ~ JH
(NOTE: Several notable mononymous males are absent from this list, but that is by design. Prince not only has a comprehensive catalogue of wildly inappropriate music, but he also seems to have wiped his entire music video collection off the face of YouTube. Bono [U2] is a great singer, but he hasn't really done a whole lot solo, so I excluded him from consideration here. Yanni is a popular musician, but he isn't much of a singer. Eminem and Drake may be highly talented rappers in their own right, but their lyrics are so foul that I declined to post any of their music here.)
1) Sting ~ "Fields Of Gold" (You can't go wrong with this guy – classic song, classic voice.)
2) Moby ~ "Raining Again" (Moby doesn't always sing the vocals for his songs, but when he does he's not half bad!)
3) Matisyahu ~ "One Day" (Wonderful song by a one-of-a-kind musician – a Hasidic Jew who sings reggae music!)
4) Beck ~ "Loser" (Some of the most bizarre lyrics ever set to music can be found right here in this song.)
5) Tedashii ft. BenJah ~ "Last Goodbye" (Two mononymous guys in one song – ha! Warning: You might want to have your Kleenexes handy...)
7) Liberace ~ "I'll Be Seeing You" (Good googly-moogly, that outfit!)
8) Babyface ~ "Every Time I Close My Eyes" (This guy's voice is smooth as silk – in other words, I'm jealous!)
9) D'Angelo ~ "Cruisin'" (A classic old-school R & B song given a new-school vibe – I like it!)
10) Donovan ~ "Mellow Yellow" (Donovan had to be on some serious drugs when he wrote this song – and maybe when he performed it, too – there's no other explanation for the blatant weirdness...)
11) Gotye ft. Kimbra ~ "Somebody That I Used To Know" (A great song by two talented singers – both of whom are mononymous!)
12) Seal ~ "Kiss From A Rose" (This was one of Seal's better ballads back in the day.)
13) PSY ~ "Gangnam Style" (Oh, yes, I went there...)
14) will.i.am ft. Cheryl Cole ~ "Heartbreaker" (Technically, I suppose you could say will.i.am is three different words, but I'm going with it anyway.)
15) Morrissey ~ "Alma Matters" (I've heard a lot about this guy, but this is the first time I've actually listened to a song by him – nice voice...)
