Eerie songs that create an unexplainable feeling

[Avril Lavigne]

Throbbing Gristle - Hamburger Lady:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BtTneSsNJ0

Ain't even clickin' this 'cause I remember very well how nightmarish it is.

[Sebastian Cobb]

All of Psychocandy with it's feedback and that.

[Drop Dead Fred]

The music from Pick of the pops(At the sign of the swinging cymbal) has always given me a feeling of something being not quite right. I first heard it as a little kid, on the radio in my dad's car, in the early eighties on a wet Sunday afternoon coming back from the customary visit to my Aunt's house. As soon as that music played, I had a sudden, fleeting and vivid reverie of a massive, dark, brick Art Deco cinema(or maybe a music hall or a theatre) full of dead people.

[flotemysost]

Green Fields by the Brothers Four https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46o1joHp7t0 (which I discovered through Faith No More's sparse, industrial-sounding cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhn3Z7Q9LLI) has one of the most bleak, melancholy melodies I can think of.

It's not dissimilar to Scarborough Fair, which always used to give me a strange, sad feeling when I was kid.

[a duncandisorderly]

bowie's take on 'see emily play'...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6WQv9GwwbM

[Phil_A]

Green Fields by the Brothers Four https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46o1joHp7t0 (which I discovered through Faith No More's sparse, industrial-sounding cover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhn3Z7Q9LLI) has one of the most bleak, melancholy melodies I can think of.

It's not dissimilar to Scarborough Fair, which always used to give me a strange, sad feeling when I was kid.

That reminds me how much I used to be haunted by the old folk song Green Grow The Rushes O, which I used to sing with my Mum when I was little. The sheer oddness of the words and images it conjured used to give me a peculiar feeling that I didn't understand. "One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so." Brr.

Looking at it now, I can see why it had that effect. It's got that Wicker Man feeling of being something ancient that's been passed down generation after generation, until much of the original meaning has been lost. I would lay odds that the Xtian parts were a relatively recent addition.

The lyrics of the song are in many places extremely obscure, and present an unusual mixture of Christian catechesis, astronomical mnemonics, and what may be pagan cosmology. The musicologist Cecil Sharp, influential in the folklore revival in England, noted in his 1916 One Hundred English Folksongs that the words are "so corrupt, indeed, that in some cases we can do little more than guess at their original meaning".[1]

I'll sing you twelve, O
Green grow the rushes, O
What is your twelve, O?
Twelve for the twelve apostles,
Eleven for the eleven that went to heaven, and
Ten for the Ten Commandments,
Nine for the nine bright shiners,
Eight for the April rainers,
Seven for the seven stars in the sky, and
Six for the six proud walkers,
Five for the symbols at your door, and
Four for the gospel-makers,
Three, three the rivals!
Two, two lily-white boys
Clothed all in green, O
One is one, and all alone,
And ever more shall be so.

[smudge1971]

Forest Swords - Ljoss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5JEd4KWW5M

Ben Frost - You, Me and the End of Everything
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJI-lufs7pU

Nico - My Heart is Empty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exFvezEOrKM

Lisa Germano - Liquid Pig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7W0Tntb9k8

David Bowie - Subterraneans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVY2ERXkNgY

I feel as if I can trust you after these five selctions. I don't think I like that feeling.

[Rolf Lundgren]

Sour Times by Portishead used to put the willies right up me.

[Norton Canes]

Take a moment to dissociate yourself from reality, with LFO's Goodnight Vienna

[manticore]

I love that first album by DEVO. I kind of wish more of their music after that has the same kind of feeling.

I don't know if there's a compilation that has the original single versions of songs from Devo's first LP, but there ought to be because they are better and stranger. The single version of 'Satisfaction' is massively superior and 'Jocko Homo' is more mind messing than it was on the LP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRguZr0xCOc

[pupshaw]

There's a few great moments in the Residents Not Available

Here where someone is singing in a kind of monotone which seems to alternately harmonize and then discord.

https://youtu.be/O-xaCdo3JiQ?t=6m28s

[manticore]

There's a few great moments in the Residents Not Available

I must respectfully dissent from this opinion. There are NO great moments in the Resident's 'Not Available'. Research has established that 'Not Available' triggers psychotic episodes in 67% of the people who hear it. The record is wholly and entirely evil and has been out to get me for the past 38 years.

That is what I have to say about The Residents' 'Not Available'.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

I remember a song I heard, about twenty-five years ago, on something like the Janice Long or Annie Nightingale show on Radio One, which consisted solely of someone, a male vocalist, going, "Hey Dad, I'm dead, Dad.  You hear me?  I'm dead, Dad, you see?  I'm dead," in an American accent, over an increasingly urgent musical background. Anyone else know that one?

[a duncandisorderly]

I must respectfully dissent from this opinion. There are NO great moments in the Resident's 'Not Available'. Research has established that 'Not Available' triggers psychotic episodes in 67% of the people who hear it. The record is wholly and entirely evil and has been out to get me for the past 38 years.

That is what I have to say about The Residents' 'Not Available'.

weird. until a few hours ago, I was wearing my residents- not available tshirt. never given me a psychotic episode; I need loads of guinness & recreational drugs for that. a bit of music's not going to set one off.

[a duncandisorderly]

'Jocko Homo' is more mind messing than it was on the LP.

alan 'fluff' freeman played the album version on his show, got my attention... hearing it again a few weeks later, I couldn't work out where the edges had gone off it. it wasn't until years later that I knew there were different versions- at the time, I just put it down to there no longer being an element of surprise.

[Epic Bisto]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdt5gErSp6w
Difford & Tilbrook - The Apple Tree. First heard it on the "Excess Moderation" comp, tucked away at the end of disc one, and if I remember correctly, it was unlisted. A truly bleak and effective post-apocalyptic ditty, that was bound to kill the good vibes the listener was experiencing after digging the lightest moments of 78-82-era Squeeze. You can easily picture the darkened streets, the flickering lights, the empty houses.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgw26G19AQ4
Alison Moyet - My Right ARM. The last track on the "It Won't Be Long" cassingle that really traumatised 7-year-old me. I literally had sleepless nights when this song started playing back in my head before I went to sleep. When my mum bought "Hoodoo" for me, I'd brave it when it cropped up and grew to love it - hell, I'd love to cover it in the next band I join - but this track, Vigo from "Ghostbusters II" and the "Deadly Nightfish" cartoon on the end of my cherished Rupert The Bear video truly scarred me and made me into the anxious young-ish man I am today. Nowadays, it doesn't freak me out like it back then, and it still holds up as one of her best songs.

[Epic Bisto]

There's a few great moments in the Residents Not Available

Absolutely. My favourite Residents album. It's quite beautiful and utterly downbeat in spots, particularly the opening moments and 'chorus' bit in "Ship's A-Goin' Down".

[manticore]

weird. until a few hours ago, I was wearing my residents- not available tshirt. never given me a psychotic episode; I need loads of guinness & recreational drugs for that. a bit of music's not going to set one off.

Congratulations! You're one of the 33% (official research) with a sound enough constitution to survive the onslaught on your sanity. Me, I was 'triggered' as I believe the kids put it nowadays. Gout Pony loves it too, I remember.

I genuinely think it would be interesting to look into the correlations between the types of personalities that are freaked out by that record and those that feel at home with it. 

[jobotic]

Track number 12 on the first Negativland album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV08nrktjlI

I remember cacking it when I first heard I Am The Jaw by Chrome. It was accidentally being played at 33rpm rather than 45, much scarier, but here it is.

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

There's a few scary moments on Rembrandt Pussyhorse but Gibby's voice (and the lyrics) on Perry are creepy as fuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xv-9Bwnd1E

[Absorb the anus burn]

I don't know if there's a compilation that has the original single versions of songs from Devo's first LP, but there ought to be because they are better and stranger. The single version of 'Satisfaction' is massively superior and 'Jocko Homo' is more mind messing than it was on the LP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRguZr0xCOc

Pioneers Who Got Scalped contains the early rougher versions (i.e. the best versions of Jocko Homo / Satisfaction etc.)

[Kryton]

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

Christ, I watched that this morning with a stonking hang-over. Just utterly weird and dry.

Why is he gurning in the video??

[Absorb the anus burn]

This Heat:

Makeshift Swahili.
A New Kind Of Water.
Radio Prague.
Sleep / Shrink-wrapped.
Horizontal Hold.                         = eerie.

[chveik]

Jarboe - Lavender Girl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ff0nrs20xg

Einstürzende Neubauten - Kollaps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knUDV_ppSyE

Anna von Hausswolff - The Truth, The Glow, The Fall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYPCpjyLDIs

Chelsea Wolfe - Feral Love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49MYJkEazIg

The Cure - Cold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkqbMJ_41gk

[Phaedra]

The Monkees

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

[famethrowa]

Definitely Everyone's Gone To The Moon. Perfectly eerie and inexplicable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWc5kD6Fa_c

[All Surrogate]

Stevie Wonder - I Just Called To Say I Love You

I find it hard to put into words how distressing I find this song.

[non capisco]

Stevie Wonder - I Just Called To Say I Love You

I find it hard to put into words how distressing I find this song.

I always find it interesting when people find overtly commercial songs distressing in a way that the artist never intended. One of my all time favourite stories on CaB was when Jockice heard 'A Different Corner' by George Michael on a clock radio in the middle of the night and for some reason found himself frozen in his bed with terror.

I suppose there is something distinctly queasy about the synths on 'I Just Called To Say I Love You'. Is the effect not nullified by that intensely crap little 'cha cha cha' flourish at the song's climax?

[greencalx]

On the subject of melancholic BBC theme tunes, I always found the one for Saturday night lotter quiz show "In it to win it" oddly incongruous to light entertainment of the show (can't find a good rendition on YouTube just now - the closing music seems more miserable than the opening, but I think it's the same).

On the subject of Portishead, the music to their short film "to kill a dead man" gives me the willies, particularly at 5.12. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p4C0KHsR8Wg

Good call on Cold from Pornography above. But Pornography itself had me waking up in a cold sweat for weeks afterwards. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gqDjsA_qN30 (ETA - and to think the next release is Let's Go To Bed, two more tonally different songs would be hard to imagine)

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

Mogwai- Tracy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3uIwEY27DQ

I remember listening to this on a long quiet car drive in the middle of the night 20 years ago thinking that music couldn't get more atmospheric and melancholy than this. Yes it could but at the time it would do.

[pupshaw]

I always find it interesting when people find overtly commercial songs distressing in a way that the artist never intended. One of my all time favourite stories on CaB was when Jockice heard 'A Different Corner' by George Michael on a clock radio in the middle of the night and for some reason found himself frozen in his bed with terror.

I suppose there is something distinctly queasy about the synths on 'I Just Called To Say I Love You'. Is the effect not nullified by that intensely crap little 'cha cha cha' flourish at the song's climax?

It does seem to resemble those nasty "i feel wonderful" dressed up dummy videos a little bit. That said it is actually a great song, it's just the amateur robotic backing track that is creepy.