The Lyrics of Monster Mash Could Easily Be About an Orgy
Spooky season is in full swing, and so, Halloween’s flagship novelty song “Monster Mash,” Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s 1962 hit, can be heard blaring from such disparate places as middle school PA systems and soaked Brooklyn bars.
But in 2022, October’s equivalent of “All I Want For Christmas Is You” can’t just be a campy tune about dancing vampires — everything on the internet is some combination of either “cursed” or “blessed,” everything is corrupted and distorted, and absolutely nothing is sacred. Not even “Monster Mash.”
That’s why, in recent years, every time autumn rolls around, someone on Twitter feels the need to point out that “Monster Mash” could be misconstrued as a salacious song about an undead orgy — that is, if you’re an Internet degenerate like us.
“It was a graveyard smash.” This is an easy one. Slang in 1962 hadn’t quite evolved to the simplicity of modern colloquialisms — people were still saying things like “doing the deed” or “whoopsie doopsie” — but today, people only say “smash” when they’re referring to either sex or video games.
“From my laboratory in the castle east, to the master bedroom where the vampires feast.” Okay, this feels intentional. Vampires “feasting” in a master bedroom carries carnal implications no matter how you slice it. Whether they’re feasting on each other or their victims is up to the listener, but as What We Do in the Shadows has taught us, orgies and food go hand-in-hand when it comes to vampires.
“The ghouls all came from their humble abodes to get a jolt from my electrodes.” Let’s be honest, what else would a horny mad scientist call his gonads other than “electrodes?”
“The coffin bangers were about to arrive.” Do they bang the coffins, or do they bang in coffins?
“For you, the living, the mash was meant to, when you get to my door, tell them Boris sent you.” What’s an orgy without a special password? Just ask Frank Reynolds.
Then the song fades out to an uncomfortable cacophony of wet sounds and impassioned grunting.
All art is subjective, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Was Bobby “Boris” Pickett just trying to write a silly song about singing zombies, or was he exploring the darker side of his sexual appetites? This was the 1960s after all — if a Led Zeppelin album played backwards can be about Satan and drinking blood, why can’t “Monster Mash” played forwards be about a blood-drinking orgy?
