Community Blog - Page 8

In response to my recent post about identifying songs that create a Scary Mood, someone asked about what the hardest or most time-consuming songs for us Music Analysts to deal with are. It’s a great question, or more precisely, two great questions, because time-consuming and hard aren’t necessarily the same things.

Harvest moons, costume parties, cheap candy, scary movies, pumpkin carving... what's not to love about October? Especially when we're talking about music! For the October 2024 edition of Pandora Picks, we get into some spooky tunes, some new songs, and some old favorites. Here's your bag of audio treats!

Come see who was featured this month!

As some of you may know, there’s a handful of us here at Pandora who have this one-of-a-kind job where we listen to individual songs and identify the musical elements present. We’re called, “Music Analysts,” though that makes us sound either like music industry speculators or white-coated lab techs monitoring oscilloscopes with medical-grade headphones.

During this autumnal, candy-corned season of Samhain, I like to dim the lights and listen to all the “graveyard smashes” that I grew up on. But I also indulge in some horror rock. Not to be confused with gothic rock or "goth," (although it should be noted that some of today’s goth bands like Vision Video are really stepping it up, horror-wise), horror rock has existed nearly as long as rock 'n' roll has. Inspired by horror films and comic books as well as by the Halloween holiday, horror rock is often regarded as "shock rock" and many music historians credit Screamin’ Jay Hawkins as the very first shock rocker. He had a hit in 1956 with “I Put A Spell on You” and he would emerge from a coffin during his live performances that included smoke bombs going off as he howled into a skull-shaped microphone.