Album · Oingo Boingo
Dead Man’s Party by Oingo Boingo
Dead Man’s Party is an album by Oingo Boingo, released in 1985. 5 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 124 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Dead Man's Party”, on 65 lists and voted number one once.
Dead Man's Party, Oingo Boingo's fifth album, came out on MCA in 1985, and it finds the band balancing art-school weirdness against radio-ready new wave. Danny Elfman produced it, and the whole thing jitters and pops with twitchy rhythms and a sense of mischief.
The title track is a macabre conga line, a celebration that shimmies right up to the edge of the grave, and the cover, a nod to Mexico's Día de los Muertos, fits it perfectly. "Weird Science" is a hyperactive, mad-scientist romp, and "Just Another Day" is tense, driving and built for the dance floor. "Stay" slows things to a pleading sway, and "No One Lives Forever" grins at mortality with a big, bouncing beat.
It gave the band their biggest chart moment. "Weird Science" and "Just Another Day" became their only singles to make the Hot 100, landing at 45 and 85, and the album was their first to go gold, selling 500,000 copies.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Dead Man’s Party on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dead Man's Party#338 of all time | 65 | #1 | 1 | 1985–2023 | |
| 2 | Weird Science | 32 | #34 | – | 1985–2026 | |
| 3 | Just Another Day | 15 | #27 | – | 1985–1999 | |
| 4 | Stay | 10 | #31 | – | 1986–2022 | |
| 5 | No One Lives Forever | 2 | #218 | – | 1992–2022 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.