Yeeeeeeeeeehaw!!! Look up there in the sky, dearest Filthy Dreams readers! What do you see? Do you see ghost riders? YIIIIPPPIIIEEEEE YIIIIYOOOOOO YIIIIPPPPIIIIEEEE YIIIIIIIYAAAAAAAAAA!!! *ahem* What’s that? Oh, don’t mind me as I howl Johnny Cash into the abyss and no, it’s not just the moonshine talking. Yes, you should be concerned, but pull up a creaky bar stool and pretend you’re at the Chicken Ranch Leghorn bar or another sleazy saloon with me.
This Halloween, I mean HALLOWREEN, Filthy Dreams has rid ourselves from the garbage and the rats of the urban environment (I mean, I was scared they were going to bite my new nylons!). Instead, we’re bringing you with us as we take an unhinged ride into the sunset of the Wild Wild West, sporting ten gallon hats and guns strapped to our sides, with our Filthy Dreams’ Country HALLOWREEN Playlist. Maybe we’ll even stop for some line-dancing if the mood strikes us. Or just sit slumped over a bar while sad cowboy music plays.
Why country? Well, this playlist was mainly inspired by that masked man of mystery Orville Peck’s playlist for Queer Appalachia, but somewhere along the way it went completely off the rails and became something else all together. I mean, Orville only put thirteen songs on his playlist. Imagine having that kind of restraint! Imagine not monomaniacally fixating about a playlist when we have a bunch of other things to do.
But really, other than our complete and utter love for Orville (and his recent foray into covering our blessed mother Lana Del Rey), country music really has the best and certainly the most violent songs for Halloween. I mean, bleak songs about murder?! Sign me up! That Knoxville girl had it coming! There’s nothing better for a Halloween hoedown than Wanda Jackson wailing about “this gun don’t care who it shoots!” I don’t think she’s kidding! Watch out! At least Johnny Paycheck is more polite when he says, “Pardon me, I’ve got someone to kill.”
Beyond the murder ballad tradition, which, of course, Nick Cave took in his own morbid direction, Filthy Dreams’ Country HALLOWREEN Playlist also has enough fire and brimstone for you to eventually give yourself up to the lord–the Dark Lord that is. The Louvin Brothers tell us “Satan is Real.” And boy, after enough songs about the devil, you start to believe it.
But don’t listen to me, as Jack Kittel dryly drawls, “I’m psycho.”