Halloween Classic Rock Songs’ Top 10

Halloween is a favorite with a lot of people. nrf.com surveys say Halloween 2025 projected spending to reach more than $13 billion this year, with 73% of Americans planning to celebrate. A great celebration need great Halloween classic rock songs. Check out our favorites, old and new.

This is not a song in normal classic rock radio play, but it is a really strong choice for the Halloween season representing 80s pop rock. Danny Elfman has been the master of Halloween music for decades. The original MTV video is awesome, but the only one I could find looked like someone recorded it with a VCR recorder in the '80s. Featuring excepts from the movie Back to School. Enjoy!

A Halloween staple. One of Ozzy's finest. This song is about a werewolf who comes back from the dead and seeks revenge. An excerpt from Ozzy's liner notes of The Ozzman Cometh read: "The title for this song actually came from a joke I used to tell where the punch line was 'eat s--t and bark at the moon.' I'd had the vocal line for this and Jake came up with the riff. It was the first song we wrote together."

Pure Alice.  It's so hard to choose just ONE Alice Cooper song to represent the Halloween feels.  I chose "Welcome to My Nightmare" because it is the epitome of a scary Halloween. Check out Alice evenings on WCSX! He has the best stories.

You can't have Halloween classic rock without Warren Zevon.  Amazingly, this song started out as a homework assignment from the Everly Brothers.  You can get the story behind this song and 12 other intentional Halloween rock songs HERE

Who doesn't associate a full moon with Halloween?  Make it a BAD moon and you've really got the Halloween feels going. This video really brings it into focus how much technology had moved forward in the last few decades. CCR never had a number one song, but they had five songs that went to number two. This is one of them.

Nikki Sixx pushes his boundaries on this one.  Originally the song was "Shout With the Devil" but management asked him to tone it down a bit.

A lesser known gem, "Clap for the Wolfman" from The Guess Who is a magnificent Halloween classic rock song and a ton of fun. The song is an homage to the famous late night DJ of the 70s, Wolfman Jack. The song was originally called "Clap for Napoleon." Songfacts.com explains more behind the song.

Donovan was WAY AHEAD of his time.  This song is more about a drug bust than witches (a witch hunt) which is crazy because Donovan wrote it just before his infamous bust. This was one of the first psychedelic rock songs. Such a great song and a time capsule of early rock.

This song, to me, is the EPITOME of Halloween rock.  As a teen of the '80s, I still love this song, not just on Halloween, but EVERY DAY (see what I did there). I put this on so many mixed tapes.

"Thriller" crosses all boundaries... it's pop, R&B and it ROCKS.  Halloween night, no one is leaving the dance floor when this song comes on. It is a classic and it rocks.... and the video is THE BEST! Here's the 4K full version. 13:41 running time!

We hope we hit some of your favorite Halloween classic rock songs and have helped you put together a strong Halloween playlist. Any suggestions? Let me know! Doni@WCSX.com