SPOOKYSONGS

Unsolved Mysteries – Gary Malkin and Michael Boyd
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DXE_z4r5_NY

As a kid, and, well, as an adult kid, nothing was more terrifying than “the unknown”… and nothing made it worse than creepy music and ominous voiceovers. And nothing made it 10000x times worse than Robert Stack. Whether he was telling us about a kidnapping or a friggin’ alien abduction, you believed it. And you were crapping your pants.

It’s weird that Unsolved Mysteries was on at 8pm on Wednesdays – it seemed more like a late Saturday night show, but, NOPE – NBC decided the best way to start people’s PrimeTime evenings was to bombard them with tales of murder and the supernatural.

And that theme!

What makes it so creeptastic? Is it Stack standing outside what seems to be some random cemetery? Is it the similarity to the Halloween theme with its weird 5/4 time signature? The panic the opening piano brings? The bwahhhhBOWWWWWM, what sounds like the sigh of a demon dragging you into the next run of the main riff? It also contains the haunted Devil’s Interval (diabolus in musica). Throw in some late-80s computer graphics and you’ve got a recipe for panic.

stay calm

In an interview with the LA Times in 2020, compose Malkin remembered: “That droning and repeating is part of what makes it ominous. It seems impervious to moving anywhere, and when it does move, it moves into really unexpected places, which is what the ‘Halloween’ theme does.” He also claims it gave him nightmares during camping trips after seeing it overlayed with so many murder reenactments.

The theme undoubtedly influenced future spooky songsters Midnight Syndicate, who incorporate the same desolate piano and synth combos on most of their albums, to great effect.

Continuing the annoying trend of “slowing down classic 80s songs makes it scarrrrrrrrrrrrrier!”, the 2020 Netflix reboot of the series features the same song, but, yep, slowed down. So it loses the panic. Still creepy though.

Throw this on at your next spooky party, put on some strobe lights, and get to stabbin’.