The Dead Can Dance… And Sing – 13 Songs About Zombies!
Hey zed-heads! Halloween is right around the corner, and in honor of ZomBCon, taking place in Seattle this weekend, here’s a short list of tracks to get you to shuffle on over to the dance floor. I tried (with moderate success) to limit song selections to those that reference actual zombies, not metaphorical ones. So while ‘Zombie’ by the Cranberries might sound like an obvious choice, the songs are less about being metaphors for decades of political strife and more about undead things that eat brains. Speaking of which…
1) Re: Your Brains – Jonathan Coulton
So good, that even though it’s not by the Midnight Riders, the Valve folks STILL included it in the Left 4 Dead 2 soundtrack. It’s the timeless story of Tom and his zombie co-worker Bob trying to negotiate a compromise on eating the eponymous brains, using office-style execuspeak. Bob does plead his case very reasonably; while he won’t concede on the brain-eating, he does offer the assurance ‘No one’s gonna eat your eyes.’ And he makes a valid point about the long-term viability of the mall as a base of operations.
2) Thriller – Michael Jackson
While the lyrics itself could be broadly interpreted to talk about pretty much ANY monster, zombies get singled out for specific mention. ‘The dead walk’ and ‘grisly ghouls from every tomb’ can’t really refer to much else, and the video makes no bones about it (pun most definitely intended). And oh yeah, it’s easily one of the greatest classic pop tracks of all time, showcasing Jackson at the height of his creative prowess, intentionally being genuinely creepy (as opposed to the unintentional creepy of later years).
3) Dead Man’s Party – Oingo Boingo
Before he became the musical voice of Tim Burton, Danny Elfman was the maestro behind a fun little 80s band called Oingo Boingo. Featured in, of all things, Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School, Dead Man’s Party is about a shindig being thrown for the recently deceased. No one sounds too happy to be there, but it’s still a party. With a song like this, it’s easy to connect the dots in the Elfman career trajectory from O.B. to T.B.
4) Zombie Dance – The Cramps
Twangy, thumping, short and sweet, Zombie Dance is a surf-rock style look at the undead prom. The consensus offered is that while zombies feel the beat, they’re not mobile enough to do much about it. As always, being stiff is the enemy of good dancing.
5) Zombie Prostitute – Voltaire
Not sure which is worse, compounding prostitution with necrophilia, or necrophilia with prostitution. But Voltaire’s song skirts that question by just going ahead and getting it on. The protagonist is lonely, and when a sign on a nearby cemetery directs him to ‘a tomb of ill repute’ he goes right for it. While the pro in question isn’t exactly in the best of shape (copping a feel on a girl literally falling apart has bad consequences), our hero still goes ahead and enjoys himself, but ultimately learns that living death is in fact an STD that he will doubtlessly pass on to others as a zombie gigolo.
6) Zombie Jamboree – Kingston Trio
This is an old-style calypso song recorded by the Kingston Trio (and by others, including Harry Belafonte), which they credit as coming originally from Trinidad. These are the classic voodoo style magical zombies, one of whom is out to make the narrator her husband. He runs for it, but if nothing else, zombie women are persistent.
7) We’re Coming to Kill Ya – Zacariah
A weird, seemingly untenable combination of hip-hop and country line dancing, this song still somehow works. Maybe it’s the naturally homogenizing effect of zombies that makes it work. After all, zombies take anyone from anywhere and make them into more zombies. Leave it to them to reconcile disparate musical tastes into a coherent whole.
8) Conversation 16 – The National
Yes, I know I said I’d stay away from zombies as metaphors in the songs for this list. But in this song, as part of their usual look at the uncertainty and dissolution of relationships, the narrator turns into a zombie AS the metaphor. So there. Plus it’s got a fantastic chorus.
9) The Living Dead – Phantom Planet
If there’s any song from this list that I would love to see on The Walking Dead soundtrack, it’s this one. Nothing else seems to capture the crawling despair of a zombie apocalypse; alternately haunted and crashing from section to section, it perfectly captures the desperate struggle and ultimate futility of trying to stay alive.
10) Nobody Likes You When You’re Dead – Zombina and the Skeletones
Being a zombie would probably SUCK. Zombina and the Skeletones get this; the narrator of their song, a former beauty queen turned zombie, whinges quite effectively about how everyone is repulsed by her and no one wants to hang out with her. Specifically: ‘Just ‘cause I’m biting on your head, there’s no need to be impolite. And if I had eyes, they would surely cry.’ So being a zombie and being a teenager aren’t that different, after all.
11) If You Shoot the Head, You Kill the Ghoul – Jeffrey Lewis
New York anti-folk singer Jeffrey Lewis pays reverent homage to the original Night of the Living Dead in this rollicking little number. It imparts the one bit of information that every movie buff and gamer already knows as gospel, but it’s such abrasive fun that it comes off as rocking instead of redundant.
12) All My Friends Are Zombies – The Priscillas
With the lyrics and tone of The Waitresses, the thrumming confidence of The Donnas, this is a fun one. While being accosted by a gross gun-wielding grannie, the narrator’s friends are all killed. But they don’t stay dead. Pretty fun for a song where your friends get massacred and turned into brain-sucking ghouls.
13) A Hard Day’s Night of the Living Dead – The Zombeatles
While lacking the pep and polish of the original Beatles, the Zombeatles aren’t bad in a clunky, lounge act kind of way. It’s just kind of sad that they can only typically make it through half any given verse before they forget the lyrics and just go ‘Braaaains…!’
