DID YOU BRING A LIGHT?

Keep in mind for all of these songs and artists I am coming at them from an outsiders perspective, I am not big into industrial music or horror or any of the specific artists and projects I mention (mostly).

So if I sound like a noob to fans of any of these specific works that's because I am but I am genuinely fascinated by them and tried to be reasonably thorough in my research to not misrepresent any of them.

Hamburger Lady, the song this post is about. The main consensus from the notes seems to be 'hey what the fuck' but the outliers to this are the industrial music and Throbbing Gristle fans who were consistently like yeah man it's just hamburger lady we love hamburger lady. Shoutout to the one guy who apparently had it on their sleep playlist you're insane <3 also there were of course a few ppl saying this isn't music, just noises, which is such a boring perspective to have but annoyingly persistent. Also a few ppl who said that it's not scary at all and if you are scared by it you're pathetic (I'm not kidding there were multiple people in the notes saying things like this), like we get it you're not easily scared but you don't have to be a dick about it.

I saw multiple people in the notes claim the song is based on a true story and many other say it's fictional. After some research into the subject I have been convinced of neither stance. The lyrics to the song originate from a letter by mail artist Al Ackerman, some sources seem to imply he worked in a burn unit and his experiences there inspired the letter regardless of whether the 'hamburger lady' ever actually existed. But other sources don't mention this at all and refer to the letter as purely fiction. So the story's basis in reality does actually seem to be disputed and unknown as far as I can tell.

Throbbing Gristle themselves are often referred to as the pioneers of industrial music and while their whole discography doesn't consist purely of scary songs there were quite a few other unsettling songs of theirs recommended in the notes. This includes 'Slug Bait' which many people seemed to find scarier than hamburger lady, I personally found it upsetting for sure but for me hamburger lady is worse to listen to.

'Animal Cannibal' and 'Perfume' are songs from Possibly in Michigan, a short film from 1983 about two women who are stalked by a masked man through a mall who they dismember and cannibalise by the end of the film.

You might know the perfume clip from tiktok, the poodle in the microwave audio, the very fact it was a popular tiktok audio does take away from the fear factor a bit for me. However I do think that the source material is a quite well made horror piece, it's creepy in an old VHS movie sort of way. You can find the whole thing on youtube (I linked it, it's only just over 10 minutes) if you wanted to watch it yourself.

Lavender Town, a track from Pokémon Red and Blue that plays when you are in a graveyard for pokemon. It was the basis of a well known creepypasta in the 2010s.

The creepypasta claims that listening to the track genuinely caused a fictional illness referred to as 'Lavender Town Syndrome' especially in young children. Symptoms of exposure included headaches, erratic behaviour and insomnia. These symptoms could supposedly escalate until the individual died or committed suicide.

It is for sure an unsettling track to listen to, it was assumedly written to be that way as it is the soundtrack for a graveyard. It's absolutely the perfect basis for a creepypasta, something many people would be nostalgic for and already a bit unsettling.

What I find interesting is a few of the people in the notes seemed to still genuinely believe the creepypasta around it, that's a little bit funny to me.

From putting these playlists together I have learned that if you are primed to be afraid of something it is much more likely to be frightening to you, I think building up the effect of a song before you actually hear it or knowing the context and backstory to a piece can truly impact how you react to it. This post does that particularly well actually, hamburger lady is perhaps a bit scarier coming from this post because you get warned that it is.

I think this is also the case for Lavender Town, if you heard it without the context of the creepypasta I just don't think it has that much of a fear factor beyond being a bit spooky but because of the story built around it people genuinely react to it. When you hear as a preteen that it can cause kids to get headaches and other mental symptoms there's almost a placebo effect that takes place because you have this preconceived notion about it.

I am very unfamiliar with vocaloid stuff and find them the hardest to track down as they're often not on spotify and often written in Japanese which I don't speak. There's also the added information of the vocaloid used for it as well as artist and song name which can be confusing to me as a guy who doesn't know the vocaloid names to be able to distinguish them from the song title or artist name.

Anyway there were a few noteworthy vocaloid songs mentioned in the notes many times so I feel I should mention them. These are the two I think were recommended the most.

Crushed Mary by mondaiji-p (using vocaloid Kaai Yuki). Yeah I get why people find this one scary, it's the use of a child vocaloid in combination with loud distorted sounds, especially after the song starts so quiet.

Secrets of Wysteria by Steampianist. This song, despite how many people mentioned it, only went on the a little bit scary playlist. It's one of those songs where if you don't know the context it's just not scary. Apparently if you play it in reverse at the end a note written by a serial killer is spoken aloud. The song itself just wasn't scary to me though.

Young Lord by Andrew W.K, ok so this is my recommendation and I'm talking about it because I went down the Andrew W.K rabbit hole a while ago and his whole deal is unsettling to me. This track is offputting imo and even though I was happily listening to it all the way through a while ago and enjoying it, I actually find it hard to listen to now.

Andrew W.K has one of those personas that seems very surface level at first, like ok he's a party guy he writes songs about partying but it's almost aggressively surface level and if you stop to think about it you realise oh this isn't genuine at all. If you ever listen to an album of his all the way through and not just his top tracks you get hit by songs like this. That's what is so upsetting about this song to me, you hear this song on an album amongst other tracks such as 'Big Party', 'We Party (You Shout)' and 'The Party God'. It's the juxtaposition of those songs that gets me, the feeling of uh oh something else is going on under the surface of this.

I read this essay on Andrew W.K. that totally blew me away and is a lot more eloquent and in depth about his work than I am here. Even then despite how long it is it feels as though it is only scratching the surface of everything (perhaps on purpose). It doesn't even mention the composition notebooks which I find to be the most compelling part of it all. I wish more people were talking about his stuff because it's genuinely super intriguing and I would love to see some youtube essayist make a video on it, I've not seen anyone make one yet but it's such a perfect topic for one. Not one of the sources I've found talking abt Andrew W.K has managed to summarise Everything, you have to go searching through sources and decades old videos and posts yourself which is perhaps what is so compelling about it. His latest music has been very on the nose about it all but that was 4 years ago now and i often wonder what he's up to and if he plans to release anything else.

Horses by David Byrne. The distortion and the gasping breaths on this one are really good. I find it genuinely upsetting, but at the same time there are parts that feel harmonic and beautiful. It's a truly evil soundscape, there's a heartbeat in the background holding everything together and when it stops every so often it feels like you're holding your breath waiting for it to start again and it speeds up towards the end which is unsettling as well.

There's a rumour attached to this song but not under the name Horses. It was circulating for a while as just 'The Ghost Song' not attributed to anyone and there was an urban legend that the composer killed themself after making it. Which is a little funny bc well obviously he didn't bc David Byrne is still alive.

I reckon it's quite a testament to the evil nature of horses, I'm sure that's not what it's really about but I like to think David Byrne just met a really mean horse and wrote a song about it.

Little Blue Man by Betty Johnson. This song is only in the a little bit scary playlist but I want to talk about it here for a second. The person in the notes who recommended it mentioned that they didn't think it was intentionally scary but they found it upsetting as a kid. But I dunno man I absolutely think it is meant to be unsettling.

It's a song from 1958 about a lady being followed around by a little blue man who only she can see and tells her over and over 'i wuv you' and the song ends with her pushing him off a building and being glad he's gone, but plot twist he doesn't die and the last line of the song is him saying 'i don't wuv you anymore'.

I think that this absolutely is meant to be a creepy song, there's something about how happy she sounds the whole song despite the subject matter being about an unkillable alien stalker who she can't shake and that no one else can see. It's sounds like a song for children but at it's core it's about the horror of having a stalker you can't do anything about. And honestly in my mind the implication of the song ending where it does is that she is attacked by the little blue man.

I know it's not that serious but the thing that really got to me with this song is that reading through youtube comments on the track no one else seems to think it's unsettling or strange? It's all just people reminiscing on hearing it when they were a kid. Like I know it's goofy and silly, but it's about stalking and is at least a little creepy?????

13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round The Side Of Your Bed by Silver Mt. Zion. Another track that is a well known tiktok audio, again this unfortunately does detract from the fear factor for me. However I do find it to be a very well crafted and beautiful song, ignoring that it was big on tiktok is a must because, like most things, it's too good to be reduced to that.

It came up very often in the notes and with lots of mixed options on it. Some people find it relaxing and comforting and others find it so upsetting they absolutely cannot listen to it.

I personally find it to be unsettling but am fine to listen to it in it's entirety, it's just slightly off putting to me. I can understand how people find it comforting though, it has a dual nature to it in that way. There's a real presence to it (I suppose that's the 13 angels) and you find them to be either reassuring or ominous. It's just so interesting to me that people seem to have such different responses to it. I really love the song and I can really respect how good it is at eliciting an emotional response in people.

(A redraw of the panel of Light hugging Misamisa from Death Note ☆ I am as reverent and darling a follower as she but I am lucky that my Kira loves me back.)

This drawing takes place in Miss Cogita's tent, which is where Volo takes me to heal after my injuries sustained during isekai. He gets a lot of villainous ideas during this time, but I don't mind at all~

–Volo's Angel and Darling, INO ♡