Song of the Day (Shocktober): Siouxsie & The Banshees “Spellbound”

Siouxsie & The Banshees

Song of the Day (Shocktober): Siouxsie & The Banshees “Spellbound”

The song is pure exhilaration

Siouxsie & The Banshees merged pop with gloomy post-punk for their bewitching 1981 single and future goth anthem, “Spellbound”. The song kicked off the group’s fourth LP, Juju, and really helped to launch them to the front of the then budding goth movement. The song pivots on an almost flamenco-style acoustic rhythm guitar track upon which the band layer gloomy atmospherics, twisty psychedelic lead-guitar bits and Siouxsie‘s formidable banshee whale of a voice. From start to stop, the song is pure exhilaration and easily one of the very best that the group ever recorded. It also includes some of Siouxsie Sioux‘s most haunting lyrics, dealing with a sudden and terrifying loss of control:

From the cradle bars
Comes a beckoning voice
It sends you spinning
You have no choice

[Pre-Chorus]
You hear a laughter
Cracking through the walls
It sends you spinning
You have no choice

You hear laughter
Cracking through the walls
It sends you spinning
You have no choice

[Chorus]
Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced
Spellbound

Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced
Spellbound
Spellbound
Spellbound

Spellbound
Spellbound
Spellbound
Spellbound

And don’t forget
When your elders forget
To say their prayers
Take them by the legs
And throw them down the stairs

When you think
Your toys have gone berserk
It’s an illusion
You cannot shirk

[Pre-Chorus]
You hear laughter
Cracking through the walls
It sends you spinning
You have no choice

[Chorus]
Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced
Spellbound

Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced
Spellbound
Spellbound
Spellbound

Spellbound
Spellbound
Spellbound
Spellbound
Spellbound

Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced

Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced
Entranced, entranced
Entranced, entranced
Entranced, entranced

The song plays like a great horror film itself, starting tense and then continuing to build terrifying imagery on top of the already existing gloom. The track feels like a broadcast from hell itself rather than the product of a group of Middle class English kids reared and formed in suburban London. Siouxsie & The Banshees enjoyed a long career and varied career, but this was indisputably one of their early highs.

 
Siouxsie & The Banshees