What’s the type of music that’s on repeat for all of spook-season, then is immediately thrown in the garbage come November? Of course it’s the Halloween album! This extremely uncharted genre has been vacant save for “The Monster Mash” and horror movie soundtracks, most of which are extremely dated. However, since last year, Kim Petras has decided to give the genre a pop facelift. You may know Kim Petras for her capitalist bop “I Don’t Want It At All,” or her debut album Clarity, which came out earlier this year; however, you probably haven’t heard of her, so here’s a quick introduction. Kim Petras is a German pop singer who has slowly built popularity over the decade with a series of singles that have exuded expensive, upbeat dance-pop. Petras is also well-known for breaking barriers for the LGBTQ community, as she is a “trans girl on [her] way to becoming a legit pop star,” as she said in a recent interview. And with Clarity and her brand-new Halloween album, TURN OFF THE LIGHT, Kim Petras has claimed her space in the pop landscape and should have a place in everyone’s Halloween playlists.
Last October, Petras offered up the first of her Halloween releases with TURN OFF THE LIGHT, VOL. 1. She defined the genre with bassy, club-ready beats, creepy, high backing melodies, and vocals sung through a vocoder or with autotuned vibrato, giving the music a supernatural tone. The lyrics and song titles, which dealt with dark themes in an overstated way, were along the lines of “o m e n” and “Tell Me It’s A Nightmare.” This formula helped create a fun and playful album, full of unexpected turns and excellent melodies. This year, Petras appended VOL. 1 with nine new songs that continued this overall formula, leaving listeners with seventeen tracks of intense but fun Halloween-party-ready music.
The album starts with “Purgatory,” an instrumental that introduces listeners to the hallmarks of this album — creepy piano, unexpected chord progressions, and plenty of drama in its booming bass drums and the shifting textures of its synths. Then, as the track slides seamlessly into the album’s first song, “There Will Be Blood,” we are reminded what was so entertaining about last year’s VOL. 1: Petras’ booming voice and creative take on Halloween lyricism.
The album is at its most potent when Petras approaches sarcasm, and even camp, with her fusion of horror and pop in the album’s lyrics and song titles. Petras turns the popular trend of boasting and flaunting her wealth and power into describing herself as a monstrous, antagonistic force. For example, in banger “Close Your Eyes,” she suggests that anyone who falls for her will “never make it out alive.” In another song, “In The Next Life,” she ominously states, “There’s no turning back now; I can’t be saved / And in the next life they’ll remember me.” And of course, in trap-pop song “Death By Sex,” she hilariously states, “You’ll be missing me in the afterlife / Tonight’s gonna be the night of your life.” Her lyric style allows her music to be viable on both pop radio and Halloween playlists, and although she isn’t exactly writing Shakespearean poetry, these lyrics are versatile and enjoyable.
Petras and her producers’ ability to write inescapable pop melodies also shines on TURN OFF THE LIGHT. “Close Your Eyes” is sing-along material all the way through, and its production is filled with subtle glitchy synths that make it true ear-candy. “Massacre” samples Christmas classic “Carol of the Bells,” but alters the arrangement to be creepy, with a high counter-melody and menacing bass line. Altogether, the album is more experimental than one would expect from a synth-pop album, utilizing dissonant chords and digital distortion on Petras’ vocals, which create an unsettling but irresistible sound.
If you’re looking to host a costume party or simply searching for a way to set the mood for Halloween, Kim Petras has released the album for you. Entertaining and enjoyable, and better with every listen, TURN OFF THE LIGHT is filled with pumpkin-carving, trick-or-treating bops that blend pop with themes of everyone’s favorite horror and slasher films. She nails the sound and lyrics of a true Halloween album, despite the genre being so lacking beforehand. This album makes me hope that more Halloween albums are released in the future, and that they dominate the conversation just like Christmas and winter holiday albums do in December. Whether or not this happens, though, Petras has certainly released an album to treasure and stream for the rest of October, and beyond.
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