Top Five Vampire Songs

By Lisa Anderson

As Halloween approaches, we start hearing certain seasonal songs like “Monster Mash” and “Spooky”; we may also dust off our copies of albums by supernaturally-themed acts like Rob Zombie. However, I would like to share my list of the top five vampire songs that aren’t really about vampires.

Some of these are from my vamp-loving early adolescence, but they all taught me that a song can be about more than one thing. They may be heard at any time of year, but scratch the surface, and they still remind me of everyone’s favorite children of the night. (The last one? Is just for fun.)

5. Heart, “The Night”

Deep in the darkness slumber, endless sleep
Nothing moves inside my funeral suite.
I feel the sun slip down as hunger strikes
Waking like being born
Here comes the night

My best friend and I always had a theory that this song was about a prostitute. Or a vampire. Or both! Interesting possibilities, non? Either way, this is not the only song on the list that connects vampire imagery with sexual themes.

4. Joan Osborne, “Dracula Moon”

Where are the bones on that one
What if the cure is worse than the disease
Serve me up some pretty, pretty people
Serve me up somebody I can believe

This is another song that might, at first, appear just to be about sex. In a bluesy drawl, Osborne sings as someone who’s just out looking for some sexual relief. It’s the first verse that puts it in vampire territory. Well, that and the title.

3. Bad English, “Forget Me Not”

A thousand lifetimes long ago
We made a promise we would not let go.
And so I come for you tonight
And we live again before we lose each other

I will be your keeper
You possess the key
Forget me not
Forget me not

Once again, it is one verse that sells this as a possible vampire song. The whole song, though, as well as the delivery, bespeaks a vampire’s powerful hold over a mortal. “Forget me not, forget me not, for you belong to me. . . ”

2. Alice Cooper, “Poison”

I want to love you, but I better not touch
I want to hold you but my senses tell me to stop
I want to kiss you but I want it too much
I want to taste you but your lips are venomous poison

While this song never explicitly mentions vampires or the supernatural, it take the obsession factor à la “Forget me Not” and reverses it. The singer may still be male, but this time he’s the one caught in a mysterious thrall.

1. Voltaire, “The Vampire Club”

Fangs were flying, capes were torn
Hell hath no fury like a Vampire scorned
Number one rule in this game:
Never call one by his real name

Visual artist and musician Voltaire, whose music is perhaps best described as gothic satire folk, has many supernatural themes in his songs. This one, however, is about things that turn out to be mundane. It’s his humorous take on youthful, faux-vampire goth culture, complete with intrusion by pirates and ravers.