Last year, to commemorate Halloween, we featured ten "monster" songs to spook up the holiday. This year we turn our attention to songs that feature ghosts — some which are malevolent, others that are of the friendly variety.
"Ghost Riders in the Sky" - The Outlaws
This classic song — written in 1948 — spins a mythic tale centered on cowboys doomed to chase the Devil's cattle throughout eternity. More than 50 artists, among them the Outlaws and Johnny Cash, have recorded the track, which also served as the inspiration for the Doors' "Riders on the Storm."
"Ghost Song" - The Doors
Released seven years after Jim Morrison's death, this track featured music written and performed by the surviving members of the Doors to accompany an existing poetry recitation taped by the band's deceased singer. The song centers on a seminal childhood event in Morrison's life, in which, Morrison claimed, the souls of Native Americans killed in a car crash "leapt into his [own] soul, and stayed there."
"Ghost of the Navigator" - Iron Maiden
This scorching metal rocker appeared on Iron Maiden's 2000 release Brave new World, an album that marked the return of lead singer Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith following a decade-long absence. Some have suggested that the lyrics - which feature a ship sailing toward a setting sun - are a metaphor for life's journey.
"Ghost Rider" - Rush
This song, featured on Rush's 2002 album Vapor Trails, chronicles in moving fashion the 14-month motorcycle journey drummer Neil Peart undertook in the wake of harrowing personal tragedy. Specifically, Peart lost his 19-year-old daughter in an auto accident and his wife to cancer, in the span of less than a year. Later, Peart penned a book with the subtitle, "Travels on the Healing Road."
"Ghost of Tom Joad" - Bruce Springsteen
This title track from Bruce Springsteen's acclaimed 1995 album takes its inspiration from the film version of the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath, and from Woody Guthrie's "Ballad of Tom Joad." In the tradition of the Guthrie ballad, Springsteen recorded the song - and indeed the entire album from which it sprang - in the acoustic folk tradition.
"Ghost Highway" - Mazzy Star
Dreamy, haunting, and somnolent, this Doors-like song from Mazzy Star's debut album features superb riffage from guitarist David Roback. Roback commonly used a Les Paul to craft Mazzy Star's psychedelic dream-pop sound.
"Ghost in You" - Psychedelic Furs
Although there's nothing spooky in the sound of this 1985 hit, the song is so damn catchy it warrants inclusion here on the basis of its title along. In an era that produced some abysmal synth-pop, the track stands as an austere gem.
"After All (The Dead)" - Black Sabbath
Tony Iommi summoned up some of his best hellfire riffs for this track from Black Sabbath's doom-and-gloom 1992 album, Dehumanizer. Among a collection of songs widely regarded as Sabbath's most melodramatic, this song was the heaviest of all.
"Spirit in the Sky" - Norman Greenbaum
Countless plays on classic-rock radio have done nothing to diminish the luster of this memorable psychedelic track from 1969. Forty years after it first hit the airwaves, the song's famous fuzz-riff still shines.
"Duppy Conqueror" - Bob Marley and the Wailers
Bob Marley wrote this song - which makes reference to "duppies," a Jamaican term for ghosts or spirits - at the instigation of producer Lee "Scratch" Perry. Marley had been complaining that various hangers-on were behaving like "human vampires," and Lee said not to worry, that he and Marley would become duppy conquerors.