“Dead Man's Party” by Oingo Boingo

"Dead Man's Party", the title track of Oingo Boingo's 1985 album, is a graveyard shuffle in a sharp suit, and MCA sent it out as the record's third single. Danny Elfman wrote the words and music, sings it with bassist John Avila, plays guitar alongside Steve Bartek, and produced it with Bartek; Bill Jackson recorded it and Michael Frondelli mixed.

Avila and Johnny "Vatos" Hernandez on drums and percussion lay down a strutting, skeletal groove, Mike Bacich's keyboards glint over the top, and the horns do the heavy lifting: Sam "Sluggo" Phipps on tenor sax, Leon Schneiderman on alto and baritone, Dale Turner on trombone and trumpet, all jabbing holes in the beat. Elfman's lyric tips its hat to "The Bus-Conductor", E. F. Benson's 1906 ghost story about a hearse driver, the tale behind a long-running urban legend.

The single history is a tangle: a 12-inch paired it with "Stay", and an edited cut went into the video and onto the flip side of "Just Another Day" in 1986. The band played it on screen in a cameo in Back to School, and decades on Elfman was still using it to close his Nightmare Before Christmas concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, with Bartek at his side.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.