Everyone has their own monster that cobwebs them with terror. It worms incessantly throughout your brain, shedding its morbidity and smouldering horror into every corner of your mind.
From leather-clad glam rock to raw metaphorical singer-songwriters, the monster has been crafted time after time into legendary music, dressed in any outfit between Dracula and death itself.
Sink your teeth into our spooky mix as we bind together the best songs about monsters.
Songs About Monsters
1. Alice Cooper – Feed My Frankenstein
The godfather of musical horror, Alice Cooper’s Feed My Frankenstein, is a landmark of monster music, entwining a sly twist within its lyrics.
Clad with lush Halloween atmosphere, Feed My Frankenstein is frenzied with the screams of guitars and a synth sound swamped in 80’s horror nostalgia.
Its dishevelled solo crawls into life; from an accumulation of sporadic notes it transforms into a creature of fully-fledged power, electrifying the theme of Frankenstein’s monster gaining consciousness.
The live performances Alice gives this song is theatrical to say the least; bringing out a monstrous, 10ft tall ghoul to parade the stage in Alice’s authentic style of comedic horror.
However, Feed My Frankenstein is not actually a song about Frankenstein. You can figure out the innuendo for yourself.
2. Eminem ft. Rihanna – The Monster
It’s not surprising Eminem wanted Rihanna to add her vocal highlights to his track Monster, after her own turn to the dark side of pop with her 2009 hit Disturbia. Like much of Eminem’s work, Monster is dark and twisted despite its pop foundations.
He twists the monster concept inside out, mutating into an idea even more ominous than Frankenstein – the monsters of the mind.
Studded with erratic compulsion and progressively mindless ad libs (like the random yodel-le-hee-hoo) Eminem’s monster is the mania of his celebrity, which slowly morphs him into insanity.
Rihanna pulls it back to the melodic realms of pop, recapitulating; “I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed, get along with the voices inside of my head… and you call me crazy.”
3. Michael Jackson – Thriller
Zombie-stuffed and set to a leering, midnight backdrop, Michael Jackson’s Thriller is the monster song for the masses.
Drawn out into 13 minutes of theatrics interweaved briefly with music, the official video sees metamorphosed Michael dead-eyed amongst his sprawling cluster of undead dancers.
Complete with howling wolves, creaking doors and other monster ambience, Jackson crafts his verses with nervous tones, perfecting a pure sense of lingering, silently enclosing horror.
Thriller’s synths enliven the track’s horror with the same /whirring disco energy of the Ghostbusters theme, fueled by quintessential 80s nostalgia.
4. Wednesday 13 – American Werewolves In London
Wednesday 13’s discography teems with nightmares. From The Wolfman to Creature From The Black Lagoon, his songs are sleekly uniformed in the inspiration of vintage horror films, aliens and other ‘monsters of the universe.’
American Werewolves In London is our pick from his discography of horror – a sharp-clawed song that tears apart the terror of werewolves with its ironically optimistic glam-rock style.
Inspired by the film of the same title, its lyrics are moonlit with chaos, death and humour, stitching tendrils of punk onto an Alice Cooper style of shock-rock.
5. Bahaus – Bela Lugosi’s Dead
Bauhaus’s track is dense in classic Hollywood monster mythos, finding its inspiration in the legend of the Bela Lugosi, who played Count Dracula in the original 1931 film.
Bela’s iconic performance is now synonymous with vampirism, from his striking Hungarian accent to his cape which he was eventually laid to rest in. A figure beclouded in such a mysterious, gritty monochromatic aura deserves a song to reflect this.
Bela Lugosi’s Dead has the sound of a symphony of spider legs, with swelling guitars like swarms of bats entwined with the unnerving feeling of the freezing cold.
Vampirism worms its way throughout the lyrics, “The bats have left the bell tower, the victims have been bled, red velvet lines the black box,” as Bauhaus bind the monstrous legend of Bela to the monster he portrayed.
6. Laday Gaga – Monster
Lady Gaga has synonymised herself with monsters since her 2009 debut. Calling her fans ‘Little Monsters’ and titling her second album The Fame Monster, she obviously has a bone to pick.
Her song, Monster, substitutes the childhood monster under the bed, for a monster in her bed. Gaga is clever in her lyrical storytelling, using monster-inspired imagery in place of blatant eroticism;
“He licked his lips, said to me, ‘Girl, you look good enough to eat… He ate my heart and then he ate my brain… he’s a monster in my bed.”
7. The Automatic – Monster
The Automatic ended up raising a generation of indie rock kids when they asked, “What’s that coming over the hill, is it a monster?”
While the video has a cameo from the Loch Ness Monster himself, The Automatic’s track Monster smoulders with many metaphorical answers.
The first assumes that the creature is a pack of wildly drunk teens becoming monsters under the influence, but scratching deeper beneath the surface reveals something much more horrifying.
The lyrics, “Brain fried tonight through misuse… Confused, mind bruised, it seeps out. Face down, hometown looks so grey,” borders upon true addictive tendencies or a crippling drug comedown, morphing the monster into a terrifying hallucination instead.
With its distractingly bright rhythm sharply contrasting the true monster, perhaps the teen drinking metaphor is a hoax in itself to make the song appear radio-friendly.
8. Rob Zombie – Jesus Frankenstein
Rob Zombie is almost the embodiment of horror. Between his twisted music and mass of disturbing and psychological films, nearly every one of his works of art pulsates with some kind of monster theme.
His track, Jesus Frankenstein describes a creature possessing the teeth of a dog, fingers of a madman, arms of a hoax and hands of deception; a monster himself and a god of monsters too.
Zombie intersperses his enclosing sense of horror with sweet acoustic movements, built up to collapse into dread once more.
9. James Blunt – Monsters
The most fearsome monster of all is one that quietly and slowly decimates your loved ones and leaves you watching in horror, unscathed.
James Blunt’s Monsters is an incredibly raw, tear-stained song about his father’s deteriorating health.
Blunt sings wholeheartedly to his dad who was diagnosed with stage four chronic kidney disease, using the clever metaphor of a monster under the bed to painstakingly reverse the roles of parenting, “Don’t be afraid, it’s my turn to chase the monsters away.”
He embroiders the childhood metaphor with the bloodcurdling despair that only comes with the hardest truths; “Oh, well I’ll read a story to you, only difference is this one is true, the time has gone.”