This is the history of the theme for Spirit Halloween (and it's got skeletons)

A year ago, when we needed it most, Nick Lutsko picked up his guitar and delivered us a theme song for Spirit Halloween. In the time since, he’s put out a(n official) sequel track, given the people a Gremlins 3 they may not have known they needed, and much, much more.

But amidst all of this, the Spirit Halloween theme remains a crown jewel in Lutsko’s plastic, comes-in-a-bag-with-a-nylon-king’s-robe crown—a musical accomplishment whose first birthday has been properly celebrated by Nerdist with an interview about how the track came to be.

The interview starts with Lutsko explaining that the Spirit Halloween theme came from him deciding to start putting out songs where he “[works] as quickly as I can and [trusts] my instincts as much as I can.” In its case, he went to a Spirit in August 2020 and “filmed stupid videos of me getting irrationally scared by all the animatronics.”

“When I was thinking about what’s the next thing I’m going to write a song about, I had all this footage of me getting scared by animatronics,” Lutsko says. “I thought, ‘Maybe I can do a theme song.’” The track was written in “a day, probably” with the idea that “the more simplistic and stupider it got, the better it was.” (He says the “They got skeletons” line “was the first thing that made my wife laugh.”)

Its popularity came quickly. Spirit Halloween itself contacted Lutsko the day after he tweeted out the video to Venmo him money and start talking about doing the official sequel. Their only requests were that he use their “unleash your spirit” slogan and not include “all the murder stuff and Bezos stuff,” which led him to the idea of a Halloween party filled with (soon-to-be evil) animatronics.

“To me that just exciting,” he says. “Because I get to go get all these animatronics for free. They’re still in my basement.”

The interview ends with the obvious question of whether Lutsko plans to do more Spirit Halloween-related work this year. To this, he says “people have been DM-ing me on Instagram and I respond with the eye emojis. I’m not going to say anything official.”

We’ll take this to mean that the old Halloween standby of a bowlful of grapes that you put your hand into while someone says “those are eyeballs!” will feature heavily in this year’s track.

For more on the theme for Spirit Halloween and Lutsko’s career to date, read the rest of the article.

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