23. Echo & The Bunnymen | "The Killing Moon"

"The Killing Moon" by Echo & The Bunnymen from the album Ocean Rain (1984)

A vampire lullaby sung from both the perspective of a willing victim and a passive voyeur, this string-laden masterpiece glides by on the frictionless slip of Will Sergeant’s plangent 12-string work and Ian McCulloch’s Liverpudlian Neil Diamond impersonation. “The killing time/unwillingly mine,” McCulloch portentously intones, and you realize that the monster’s seduction could indeed sound this richly beguiling.
 Daniel Brockman