* I don't remember if I even needed my parents to use their lineup for me, but if so, they were cool with it. That would never happen now.But scariness shows up even where you'd least suspect it, like in pop music. Even if it wasn't the norm, there were quiet enough spooky-sounding hit songs that they still stand out in my memories of music during the pre-adolescent stage of animation where you're not even trying to pay attention to music. When it's haunting, you can't help but pay attention. Off the top of my head, here are the ones that made the strongest impression (all likely are on YouTube): "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes. This one haunted me throughout my childhood because my dad played the one ended and over and over. It was one of the fistful of contemporary songs that he liked (he's stuck in the mid-'60s), and he played it in car rides for at least 10 days later it came out. Synthesizers are inherently creepy because they're close enough to looking like organic instruments, yet are not so contrived that our brain would cover them as non-musical sound. They're in the "uncanny valley." Add to the synth line her rough voice and mysterious femme fatale lyrics - "all the boys think she's a spy" - and you've got a certain spooker. "Private Eyes" by Hall & Oates. Another one I recall from endless repetition as my father played the record during every car ride to daycare when I was 2 or 3 - it's one of the few vivid memories I get from such an early age. Here it's not so often the instrumentation that's freaky, but the chorus' stalker vibe - both the lyrics and the spirit of voice - is adequate to give you worry. "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell. Seriously, what was it about eyes in '80s songs? (Though I don't recall "Eyes Without a Face". I didn't see this one so often, probably just on the wireless in the car or when my parents were watching MTV, but those few times were enough. There's another creepy synth line, a similar sound to one of the background vocals, and the paranoia that comes through in the lyrics and tone of voice. "Dirty Diana" by Michael Jackson. Oddly enough, I get little store of the songs from Thriller (or else "Billie Jean" would get a mention), but when Bad came out I played the tape all the way through just about every day. This call was unquestionably the most nerve-wracking because it not only had the synth line and stalker lyrics, but the harder guitar riffs and his voice play off against them to make a palpable tension. It feels like the creeping-from-behind synth line and his panicking voice are caught in a physical struggle for dominance, accentuated by the drum machine hits that sound like one of them striking or kick the other. "Rhythm is Gonna Get You" by Gloria Estefan & The Miami Sound Machine. Every time I heard this song, I thought "This is devil-worshiping music." When the background voices shout "oway-oway, oway-owah" and "woo!" you look like you're eavesdropping on a Satanic chant during some ritual sacrifice. Except you're not just overhearing this unobserved - the lyrics are all about how they see you and this life or shade or any "the beat" is, is out to have you and there's nothing you can do to stop it. I guess I saw the tv once or twice, and that only confirmed my fears. Honorable mention: "Finally" by CeCe Peniston. Yeah that's right, laugh it up. It turns out that it's an early '90s incarnation of "I'm So Excited," and she's singing about how sick she is for some guy she only met. But my mind never registered the verses, only the chorus where her voice sounds like she's paralyzed and terrified by her want of command over her surroundings. In retrospect, I see how she used that to indicate how powerless she felt because of bed at first sight or whatever, but at the sentence I imagined the singer had but been raped or beaten or mugged, or witnessed these things while walking down the street or in her own neighborhood - one of those "you think it couldn't happen here" moments.I'm sure I've left a lot out in this cursory look. What else comes to mind?I don't think hearing anything like these after the '91-'92 social transformation. Sure there's the angsty emo whining and shrieking that the late-career Smashing Pumpkins and My Chemical Romance brought out, not to name a lot of growling rejects churning out nu metal, but that's not haunting at all. There's no suspense or anxiety or paranoia. The closest we've gotten to that voice in the preceding 20 years was probably "Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears, one of the few mega-hits from this point that I liked at the clock and yet do.My opinion is that the female singers are best at these songs, most probably because they're more easily frightened to start with and more apt to expressing that fear, worry, and powerlessness to others so that they can get help.In any case, there's another origin of malaise that the Millennials have been saved from - spooky pop music songs. Unfortunately that won't change as they turn up because it's not only due to their helicopter parents keeping such songs out of earshot - the songs are simply not getting made in the 1st place. This is a general pattern: parents are almost over-protective when times are the safest. It sounds paradoxical but is not, as their underlying paranoia has two effects: 1) it keeps them and their families locked in their homes, draining the pool of potential victims of street-roving criminals, who then go on to other business; and 2) it makes them hover over their kids at home.* For at least several months after first seeing it, I was confident that the queen alien was hiding under my bed. Several times as I faced the fence before falling asleep, I had vivid illusions that she had sprung up from underneath and towered all the way up the wall, somewhat like the picture where she abducts Newt. I toughed it out and kept renting the movie, though formerly I left my door opened only in example I had to call to my father that I was being taken away. That provided me with little comfort, as I could then see into her way and imagined that all the shadows waving around her bedroom walls - surely just tree branches from outside - were warrior aliens who had infiltrated our house and were probably already cocooning her. Yet I couldn't stop watching that movie. When you feel the earth is dangerous, you need to toughen yourself up to it by watching scary movies, just like you'd spar in a gym before a real boxing match or street fight.
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