Spooky Wind Down Songs

I always used to fall asleep listening to the radio, which is fine normally because normally it was just regular songs but some spooky songs came on the radio as well.

The songs that freaked me out were mostly 70s/80s music. With synthesisers.

Also if they whispered they freaked me out.

Something else that freaked me out was the advertisements. There were 2 that played. Sometimes 3. They were: ‘join the army and go to war’ (this was 93-96 not ’01 so I didn’t really have politics but it was still scary, fighting is scary & if you don’t know that then you’re too far gone), ‘stop smoking because your lungs are full of ash and your heart is breaking’ and ‘check your fire alarm because your house is going to burn down’. These freaked me out.

Back to the songs. Any song about whispering and synthesisers creeped me out. This was because I imagined them as what songs would sound like on another planet. If there was any kind of cruelty to them, that went even worse.

It was called “the Wind Down Zone” because it was aimed at grown-ups not children and ran from 7pm-10pm. After that time of night it was over & if I was still awake I got freaked out even more, like I had failed.

The freaky songs I remember:

Luca
Toy Soldiers
I’m Not In Love

Luca
I thought that Luca was a real little boy in the radio asking for help. Nobody lived upstairs from me as far as I knew until I moved to the flat but it still scared me. Maybe he lived in the attic? Second floor in England is 2 above the ground not 1 so that'd be my attic...

Suzanne Vega - Luka - YouTube

Toy Soldiers
This was a war going on somewhere in the world. Again, war is scary. All you need to know to know this is ‘war is a big fight and people die’. And at the time I still had Toy Story Mindset so whether they were doll people or real people didn’t really matter, sometimes I thought it was about dolls dying & sometimes people dying.

Martika - Toy Soldiers - YouTube

I’m Not In Love
What scared me on this was the nasty lady who came on and said ‘be quiet, big boys don’t cry, big boys don’t cry’. I didn’t know why she was being so mean or who she was talking to. I was a girl but I thought she was talking to a little boy somewhere. Maybe to Luca.

10cc - I'm Not In Love - YouTube 

These weren’t the only songs like it but these were the songs I remember listening to when I was about 6/7 and they freaked me out.

For full impact: turn all lights off, lie in the dark, imagine you know no more than a 6 year old child & have the heightened emotions of one as well.