Even for the most jaded among us, there are moments in songs that are able to manufacture a particular emotion and force it directly into the listener’s brain. At one end of the spectrum, you have the sad songs. Sometimes downright schlocky (that one song about the dad watching the daughter grow up and get married that every wedding-goer for a decade was forced to endure), sometimes genuine and soul-stirring (the better half of Nebraska), these are the songs which can take you from just-got-paid-goin’-to-the-titty-bar-with-my-college-buddies highs to Slyvia-Plath-watching-Schindler’s-List-with-the-sound-off-and-Elliot-Smith-records-on-endless-repeat lows. At the other end, you have the happy songs. These seek to move you in the opposite direction and often employ such wonderful devices as the truck driver’s gear change. These two extremes are convincing you, the listener, that either “nothing can ever go wrong” or that “everything has already gone wrong,” respectively.

Somewhere in the middle, there is a set of songs which—either on purpose or by sheer coincidence—can convince the listener that “something really bad is about to happen.” It is no small feat to cause terror in your listener (assuming you are not recording a Noam Chomsky audiobook) and I can only think of a few instances. To wit:

The Dead Boys – “I Need Lunch”
At approximately 1:57 in the song, Stiv Bators delivers the line “Look at me that way, bitch/your face is gonna get a punch” with such a sense of malice that it is still shocking to me three decades later in a way that “I wanna fuck you like an animal” just could never be.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard – “Raw Hide”
The second ODB “verse” comes off the rails in the most brilliant and terrifying way possible. “I wanna see blood/well, there’s period blood/or bustin’ your fuckin’ face/SOME BLOOD” Yowza. Side A of this record is one of the rawest, most menacing collections of music I’ve heard. It’s like being dragged into an alley at night and screamed at by the most deranged street lunatic imaginable.

Any other nominations? I will concede that Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Get in the Ring” was no doubt written to try to convey this same sort of emotion, but the only thing scary about this song is that hearing it means you’re going to be hearing “Pretty Tied Up” in less than ten minutes unless you get off your ass and change the record. Cool ranch dressing, indeed.