In many ways, the Halloween music canon is much like the one for Christmas music — once you’re in, you’re in forever, but it might take decades before you even get considered. Of the five songs that re-entered Billboard Hot 100 in 2025 as a result of a Halloween bump, the most recent was from 32 years earlier, with The Citizens of Halloween’s “This Is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas, with the other returns hailing from as far back as 1962 (Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers’ “Monster Mash”). And a brand new (or even a relatively new) song becoming a Halloween staple is virtually unheard of.
But this year, one contemporary hit is big enough and Halloween-y enough that it appears to be jumping the line, eschewing the usual waiting period for eligibility and declaring itself a holiday staple right away: Tame Impala & JENNIE’s “Dracula.”
The song, originally from Tame’s October 2025 album Deadbeat, has already grown into one of the biggest hits of 2026 — holding at its No. 5 high on the Hot 100 this week (dated Nov. 7) and spending the entire year thus far on the chart — with extra acceleration provided this year with its February-released official remix adding JENNIE. But even with the tremendous success it’s already achieved in the past year, Oct. 31 still marked another peak for “Dracula,” as it racked up 2.8 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate — a new single-day high for the song, by a nearly 40% margin.
Previously, the best day for “Dracula” had come on April 6, when the song amassed just over 2 million streams — during the time when the JENNIE remix was really starting to go viral on TikTok, propelling the song to another level of pop success. The song’s 2.8 million streaming total from this Halloween also represented a 56% gain from the 1.8 million it racked up the prior Halloween, and a whopping 148% gain from the 1.1 million streams it posted the previous Saturday (Oct. 24).
It should be said that “Dracula” is not really a horror tale, so much as a delirious late-night lament of romantic longing. But with its horror-themed title, haunted-house synths and eerie wordless vocal hook, it still makes for a natural fit on spooky-season playlists.
Even with its big Halloween gains, “Dracula” still fell well short of the Oct. 31 totals posted by some of the usual seasonal heavy-hitters, like Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (10 million), the aforementioned “Monster Mash” (7 million) or Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” (6.6 million). But among 21st century spooky songs, “Dracula” was pretty comfortably tops, well ahead of such other strong-performing titles of the past quarter-century like Rihanna’s “Disturbia” (2 million), Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” (1.4 million) and Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater” (1 million).
Will “Dracula” be able to maintain its lead over other 21st century titles as it fades as a real-time hit? Time will tell on that one, but in the meantime, it’s not disappearing anytime soon. With its Halloween streaming bump and still-robust airplay numbers this week (it has topped Radio Songs for seven weeks and counting), it actually should be in line for a new peak on the Hot 100, in its 58th week on the chart — although it’ll need to maintain a good amount of that bump throughout the week to truly contend for the No. 1 spot.
