And if I die today I’ll be the happy phantom
And I’ll go chasin’ the nuns out in the yard
And I’ll run naked through the streets without my mask on
And I will never need umbrellas in the rain
I’ll wake up in Strawberry Fields every day
And the atrocities of school I can forgive
The happy phantom has no right to bitch…

I realize a lot of my BHS songs this season have focused on death — from a variety of perspectives — and that’s on brand. For Halloween, anyhow.

I mean, this is the season of haunts, spooks, ghosts, poltergeists, zombies, freemasons, and all sorts of creepy ghoulish creatures from the next world. So if we’re holding the Next World up in high relief, let’s relieve ourselves of pretense. Whilst high. Whatever.

Which brings us to Happy Phantom, the joyously jaunty track from Tori Amos’s debut album Little Earthquakes. This record dropped right around my senior year of college and it was the proverbial shot across the bow for many (including myself) who loved alternative music and looked for Cool New Sh!t to listen to. Amos had an inimitable, endearingly idiosyncratic method of songwriting and performance that seemed both immediate and otherworldly all at once.

Plus, you know, redheads. Sigh…

Happy Phantom is an easy entry for our Halloween playlist. What would you do if you died today? Could you let go of this world and the life left behind? Would you embrace the unknowable adventure of eternity? Would you let your junk flap in the wind and torment those you always wanted to seek vengeance upon?

All of it, of course, is set to Amos’s breathy, sinewy vocals and that jaunty, jazzy piano accompaniment. By the time Amos erupts in those joyful whoo-oo’s, you can feel every last ounce of gleeful mischief that the Happy Phantom engages itself in. Even if the sun is setting and they have to face whatever judgment eternity stands to impose on them.

Whatever. You only live once. You only die once too. The Happy Phantom gets it all too well. Live it up, even in death.

Oo who
The time is getting closer
Oo who
Time to be a ghost
Oo who
Every day we’re getting closer
The sun is getting dim
Will we pay for who I’ve been?