‘Golden Girls’ Theme Song Writer Earns First Billboard No. 1 Thanks to ‘Spooky’ Halloween Hit
Billboard ·
Late singer/songwriter Andrew Gold is also back in the top 40 on the Hot 100 for the first time since the 1970s with "Spooky, Scary Skeletons."
Andrew Gold ’s long-viral hit “Spooky, Scary Skeletons (Undead Tombstone Remix)” makes its Billboard Hot 100 debut this week, as the spooky-fun song bows at No. 35 on the chart dated Nov. 14. The latest list’s tracking week ran Oct. 30-Nov. 5, thus, capturing activity around Halloween.
The song’s popularity pushes its parent album, Andrew Gold’s Halloween Howls: Fun & Scary Music , to the top of the Kid Albums chart, marking the late artist’s first-ever Billboard No. 1.
“Spooky, Scary Skeletons” was performed, written and produced by Gold and first released in 1996. The track was popularized in 2010 when a YouTuber paired it with the 1920s Disney cartoon The Skeleton Dance . The song gained another life when it was remixed in 2013 by electronic duo The Living Tombstone. That version, dubbed the “Undead Tombstone Remix,” has since become a seasonal hit.
Gold — a singer, songwriter, producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist, who died in 2011 at age 59 — was the son of Academy Award-winning composer Ernest Gold and singer Marni Nixon. He got his break in 1973 when he joined Linda Ronstadt’s band — in which he contributed to a Hot 100 No. 1 by playing piano, guitar, drums and percussion on her classic “You’re No Good.”
Gold subsequently forged a successful solo career as a performer, notching four Hot 100 hits in the 1970s on Asylum Records, including a pair of top 40-charted hits with “Lonely Boy” (No. 7 in 1977) and “Thank You for Being a Friend” (No. 25 in 1978). The latter went on to be covered by Cynthia Fee as the theme song to the hit TV series The Golden Girls , which originally aired on NBC from 1985 through 1992.
Further, Gold was half of the duo Wax, which notched a Hot 100 hit in 1986 with “Right Between the Eyes.”
Gold additionally wrote songs for other acts including Wynonna — the Hot Country Songs No. 1 “I Saw the Light” — Celine Dion, Trisha Yearwood and 10cc. He also collaborated in the studio and onstage with artists ranging from Ronstadt and James Taylor to Joni Mitchell and Cher.