Golden Girls Theme Song Writer Earns First Billboard No. 1 Thanks to Spooky Halloween Hit
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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.
