Festering hordes of shambling undead monsters may not seem like a good subject for music but zombies have inspired many great songs. While thousands of songs have been written about the undead, most are about death, the afterlife and revenge. Zombies, on the other hand, have inspired love ballads, protest songs and pop hits. It seems that musicians have found the shambling hordes to be quite adaptable as subject matter.
This is not meant to be an inclusive list but inspiration for your own zombie themed playlist for your upcoming Halloween parties and zombie walks.
1. Re: Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton:
Jonathan Coulton is best known for two songs: Still Alive and this one. Re: Your Brains is about a zombie named Bob singing to a human survivor named Tom trapped in mall, asking him to open the doors so he can eat the human’s brains. The zombie is extremely articulate for the undead and makes a convincing argument for Tom to just let the undead in:
I don’t want to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?
Spend your whole life locked inside a mall?
Maybe that’s OK for now but someday you’ll be out of food and guns
And you’ll have to make the call
I’m not surprised to see you haven’t thought it through enough
You never had the head for all that bigger picture stuff
But Tom, that’s what I do, and I plan on eating you slowly
The song has become a major hit in geek circles. It was included in the game Left 4 Dead 2 as an Easter egg. Cycle through the songs on a jukebox in the game and it will eventually land on Re: Your Brains.
Because Coulton released it with a Creative Commons license, anyone can make a derivative work based on it as long as they credit him and don’t make money off of it. This has led to multiple music videos and fan works across the Internet. I even used it as the song for an episode of my podcast Role Playing Public Radio. If you ever want to create a zombie themed Youtube video, Re: Your Brains is the perfect go to choice for music.