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Eerie songs that create an unexplainable feeling

Started by Clownbaby, July 19, 2018, 10:37:39 AM

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Clownbaby

Inspired by what people have been saying about O Superman and Spaceman in the "things that scared you as a kid" thread, there's some songs where they feel strangely cursed, or you don't know exactly how to feel when you hear them, or they're just plain eerie. I've been getting it with

Kraftwerk - Radioland

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Va7JztNeQCo






gilbertharding

I remember Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks giving me odd feels when I first heard it. I was 5 when it came out, so there was a period then when I heard it quite a lot, then a long period where I had no means of hearing it at all, which added to the mystery.

Whenever I hear it now it gives me a completely different feeling - mild embarrassment that I was so affected by such cheap tricks, and wasn't (at 5 years old) sophisticated enough to even know about the Jacques Brel original.

popcorn

The song Utopia by Bjork contains a looping sound that I find alarming and upsetting. It sounds like a weeping alien child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqbv7cCM5AI&feature=youtu.be&t=30

gilbertharding

Quote from: Fisher Goes Berserk on July 19, 2018, 10:46:25 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5prT2qiiWY

Also, the video is horrible.

Oh God - this is hard to explain, but that song was *the* song which was played at the very first school discos I ever went to and was my cue to wonder if I would ever get to slow dance with a girl (the actual answer was 'Yes, in about 3 or 4 years.').

boki

'Art Decade' by Bowie does that for me.  I didn't even hear it for the first time until I was about 20 and it still gave me the willies.

And there's the good ol' 'Tales Of The Unexpected' theme, which still creeps me out.

Norton Canes

Pretty much any single from the charts between 1973 and '76, but mostly Chicago's 'If You Leave Me Now'

Shaky

Oxygene Part... whatever used to really, really unsettle me and still does to some extent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DDEl7JnWvo

As a kid I used to have a recurring dream where I was in the back seat of a moving, driver-less car as it endlessly wound it's way around our labyrinthine country roads at dusk. The moment I heard the following I was reminded of that spooky reverie once again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cez-w7fzEP4






Absorb the anus burn

Memories Can't Wait by Talking Heads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJu-IABeCws

In fact, anything from side two of Fear Of Music.

Phil_A

The violin/organ fade-out at the end of Mr Robinson's Quango by Blur used to give me a very eerie feeling, like a glimpse of some unsettling musical otherworld behind the brassy Madness-isms of the track itself, which is not actually eerie in any other way.

"Locked groove" fadeouts in general can be quite unnerving, thinking of the repeating laugh at the end of Slush by the Bonzos, and the end of Bowie's Chant Of The Ever-Circling Skeletal Family that goes "Bruh! Bruh! Bruh! Bruh!" for ages.

Pseudopath

Quote from: gilbertharding on July 19, 2018, 10:47:30 AM
Seasons in the Sun...Jacques Brel original.

Well fuck my hat, I didn't know that. I thought I knew a lot of Brel's work too.

TheMonk

This got to number one in Australia.
It's like aliens have been shown pop music and tried to create their own version.
https://youtu.be/1-8xMWA6_ZE


Clownbaby

#15
.


wosl

Quote from: ajsmith2 on July 19, 2018, 12:13:07 PMWorld In Action end theme

It was the opening theme that used to get me. As a kid, every time I heard it thunder out, a cycle of airlessly grim associations started up in the mind: plane crashes, septicemia, IRA bombings, sieges, dead German terrorists, the Black Panther.  The closing theme, although bereft-sounding, did have something consoling about it. (Related note: whenever you saw an episode on WIA being screened with the little white box in the corner of the screen to indicate disturbing content, a wave of chill would go through you.)  The Tornados' Telstar has the ability to unnerve me; for an 'upbeat' tune heralding the dawn of a new age there isn't half something haunted about it (it had this effect before I ever knew about Joe Meek or his murderously violent demise).

BlodwynPig

Most of OMDs Architecture and Morality. My gran won the cassette at a raffle at my school in 1985.

It was my first tape.

It coincided with my night terrors and waking hallucinations. I still listened to it. The tape would often stop abruptly, silence filling the void, me shuddering and sweating in bed. What was that keening noise outside coming from the Dene?

Christ.

A great album though, but melancholic, haunting and woozy in equal measure

Clownbaby

There's something about Crescendolls by Daft Punk I find a bit.. threatening

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=quHVq28Y_gg

Nobody ever knows what I mean though. I think it's the endless manic repetition and the "weeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!" It's like the musical equivalent of being stuck on a fairground ride, and you don't feel like you're secured in the seat properly, and everyone else is enjoying it but you

gmoney

Quote from: TheMonk on July 19, 2018, 12:37:08 PM
This got to number one in Australia.
It's like aliens have been shown pop music and tried to create their own version.
https://youtu.be/1-8xMWA6_ZE

This is utterly horrible.

"ken C.D
2 months ago
Great video , great beat ! Play it Loud and hear the great bass ."

Fucking hell.

Clownbaby

Quote from: TheMonk on July 19, 2018, 12:37:08 PM
This got to number one in Australia.
It's like aliens have been shown pop music and tried to create their own version.
https://youtu.be/1-8xMWA6_ZE

What the fuck? The commenter going on about "real music" and "99% of new music is crap"

Really not a good song to be commenting on with that mate

BlodwynPig

Quote from: TheMonk on July 19, 2018, 12:37:08 PM
This got to number one in Australia.
It's like aliens have been shown pop music and tried to create their own version.
https://youtu.be/1-8xMWA6_ZE

I like that one. It is tonally similar to early Yello...this is from the second tape I ever owned

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tILgZn8G2k

gmoney


gilbertharding

#24
"This is a test, of the emergency broadcast system!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YRHAro1iTE

Or The Lincolnshire Poacher Numbers Station shortwave tone call signal...

These probably don't count as 'unexplainable' though.

Clownbaby

Goldfrapp - Lovely Head

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ITi6uat0BuQ

Is it a synth or human wailing? Or both? This whole album really.

DrGreggles


Avril Lavigne

Deerhunter - Fluorescent Grey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uan16eNDOME

It kinda reminds me of how I feel when I've woken up in the morning from a strange dream or nightmare and in spite of the daylight & tangible reality, still feel like the world around me is slightly askew and unreal.

Fisher Goes Berserk

Quote from: Absorb the anus burn on July 19, 2018, 12:19:46 PM
The Visitors by ABBA.

I've always loved the fact Abba wrote a song about the KGB.

That whole album is creepy. About 40% of it is Frida freaking out in an abandoned funfair.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uPjwthcTbQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWRr5MS_adQ

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on July 19, 2018, 12:38:25 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnVAyFuxK8c&frags=pl%2Cwn

Oh, the HTV jingle is *beautiful*. It reminds me for some reason of story cassettes I had as a child, maybe by Disney. Similar synth sound or something, I'm not sure.

Longer version here (not safe for epileptics):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-agHZuB59N0

The Southern jingle is beautiful too, though it got a bit freaky on their last night of broadcast (skip to 9:28):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2QS-aLGSGE

Quote from: gilbertharding on July 19, 2018, 04:03:18 PM
The Lincolnshire Poacher Numbers Station shortwave tone call signal...

I love the numbers stations! I don't find the Lincolnshire Poacher one especially creepy, though that might just be because it makes me think of Rambling Syd.

Quote from: Avril Lavigne on July 19, 2018, 08:18:23 PM
Deerhunter - Fluorescent Grey

The tack piano at the beginning reminds me of one of my favourite eerie songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXxprhjaot4

The 'Protect and Survive' jingle (first at 1:30 here) is disturbing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6U9T3R3EQg

There is something about this song that just crushes me, but I'm a complete masochist, so I listen to it a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-mGMm0IIqk

flotemysost

Quote from: Clownbaby on July 19, 2018, 04:58:20 PM
Goldfrapp - Lovely Head

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ITi6uat0BuQ

Is it a synth or human wailing? Or both? This whole album really.

That track gave me a really bizarre and unexpected sad, lonely, pining sort of feeling when I first heard it, as if I'd just watched a heartbreaking film. It was like I really wanted to listen to it again, but I also didn't feel quite ready to put myself through those emotions again (I can listen to it now - love that album).

I'm pretty sure the wailing is Alison Goldfrapp and a theremin.