The 2020s File Feature
This Is Halloween
This Is Halloween — The Citizens of Halloween and a Song That Never AgesA Composer, a Director, and a Peculiar Little TownDanny Elfman has spent his career w…
01 The Story
This Is Halloween — The Citizens of Halloween and a Song That Never Ages
A Composer, a Director, and a Peculiar Little Town
Danny Elfman has spent his career writing music that lives at the intersection of the whimsical and the macabre, and few pieces in his catalog demonstrate that gift as vividly as the opening number from Tim Burton's 1993 stop-motion film The Nightmare Before Christmas. The creative partnership between Elfman and Burton had already produced the scores for Beetlejuice, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands, establishing a shared aesthetic vocabulary that felt perfectly suited to a story set in a world made entirely of Halloween. The song functions as both a musical overture and a declaration of identity for Halloweentown, introducing every resident of that peculiar place in a rapid-fire cascade of character voices. Elfman composed the song and performed the majority of its lead vocals himself, a technical and creative feat that set the entire emotional tone for the film before a single plot point had been established.
The Architecture of the Song
What makes the track remarkable from a compositional standpoint is how much information it delivers in roughly three and a half minutes. Each verse belongs to a different inhabitant of Halloweentown, each with its own melodic inflection and vocal texture, creating the impression of a living community rather than a single narrator. The orchestration is Elfman at his most theatrical: strings that swoop and skitter, brass that lurches in the night, and a rhythm section that suggests a carnival ride slightly out of control. The darkness is present but the delight is louder, and that tonal balance is exactly what the film required.
How a Movie Song Became an Annual Ritual
The film had a complicated theatrical history at first, but over the following decade it built a cult following through home video and cable television that eventually made it one of Disney's most beloved properties. The song traveled with it, picking up new generations of fans each October. Each Halloween season, This Is Halloween becomes inescapable: in shopping playlists, on streaming services, at costume parties, in viral videos of children introducing their dressed-up pets to its melody. That annual resurgence explains the track's recurring appearances on the Billboard charts long after its theatrical release.
The Chart Numbers Tell the Seasonal Story
The Billboard data here is characteristic of a seasonal cultural institution. The song charted under the artist credit "The Citizens of Halloween," reflecting the ensemble vocal nature of the original recording. It debuted at number 41 on November 11, 2023, returned the following year, and peaked at number 38 on November 9, 2024. The 86 million YouTube views are a conservative measure of its actual reach, since the song circulates through countless unofficial covers, remixes, and fan videos that the official count doesn't fully capture.
More Than a Song, a Holiday Mascot
At this point, This Is Halloween functions less as a piece of film scoring and more as a cultural touchstone for the season itself, standing alongside the holiday's other sonic traditions the way a Jack-o'-lantern stands alongside the candy bowl. Elfman's composition has outlasted trends and fashions by tapping into something genuinely primal: the joy of being scared in a safe, theatrical way, where the monsters want you to see them and the night is made for exactly this kind of celebration. The track has been covered by dozens of artists ranging from heavy metal bands to indie pop acts; each new version is its own tribute to how well-constructed the original is, since a song that survives that many reinterpretations is built on something structural rather than stylistic. Every October, new playlists are created with it as the anchor, and every November it disappears again, waiting for its next lap around the calendar. Put it on in late October, and you will understand exactly why an audience keeps returning to it, year after year, like trick-or-treaters who know exactly which house gives out the good candy.
“This Is Halloween” — The Citizens of Halloween's singular moment on the 2020s charts.
02 Song Meaning
The Meaning Behind This Is Halloween by The Citizens of Halloween
An Invitation and a Warning
The song operates as the emotional and narrative front door to Halloweentown, a place where the monstrous is ordinary and the ordinary is monstrous. Its core gesture is one of welcome, but welcome delivered by creatures who want you to understand exactly where you are. The residents are proud of their darkness; the song is their collective declaration that they exist, they matter, and they are very good at what they do. The first moments of the track function as a key turning in a lock: you are entering their world now, on their terms.
The Democracy of Fear
One of the song's most interesting structural choices is its insistence on giving voice to every kind of Halloween creature rather than centering a single protagonist. The witch, the skeleton, the spider, the ghost: each gets a moment to announce themselves. This creates a vision of fear as democratic and communal rather than hierarchical. No monster is more important than another; all contribute to the shared project of making the night feel alive and slightly dangerous. The song argues, implicitly, that Halloween belongs to everyone who participates in it.
Play vs. Menace
Elfman walks a careful tonal line throughout the number. The inhabitants of Halloweentown are genuinely frightening within the logic of the film's world, but the song presents their nature with such exuberance that fear is transmuted into excitement. This mirrors how Halloween itself functions in broader culture: a holiday that uses the imagery of death and terror to produce something that feels celebratory rather than genuinely threatening. The darkness is real; the danger is theatrical; the joy is completely sincere.
The Child's Eye View
Much of the song's long cultural life comes from how directly it speaks to a child's relationship with the spooky and the fantastical. Children, far more than adults, take Halloween seriously as a cosmology. The film and its opening number validate that seriousness, suggesting that the creatures of the night have their own interior lives, their own pride, their own rituals. That respect for the imaginative world of childhood is part of what made the film beloved across decades and continues to bring new young audiences to it every fall.
Why It Endures
The song has survived thirty-plus years because it successfully bridges the gap between nostalgia and novelty. For adults who encountered the film as children, it is a portal back to a specific kind of Halloween feeling that nothing else quite replicates. For new generations encountering it fresh, it stands on its own as a brilliantly constructed piece of theatrical music. The melody is genuinely hooky, the concept is imaginative, and the execution is flawless. Those qualities do not expire, and neither does the holiday it celebrates.
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