“Revenge” star and huge music fan Nick Wechsler has compiled an exclusive Halloween playlist for Spotify.
It includes more than 30 tracks, such as “The Becoming” by Nine Inch Nails, “Rosemary’s Baby” by Fantomas, “Buried in Water” by Dead Man’s Bones, among many others.
“Some were chosen for obvious lyrical or thematic reasons,” Wechsler, who plays Jack on the ABC drama, told TheWrap, “some because I found them particularly haunting or moody, while others were chosen because they straight-up scared me when I first heard them.”
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TheWrap spoke to Wechsler, who’s heading to Hollywood Forever’s Dia De Los Muertos celebration for Halloween, about choosing the tracks and what the mix says about his personality.
TheWrap: What was the easiest part of putting together the Spotify mix?
Nick Wechsler: The easiest part for me was that I’m a huge, huge music fan. Since it’s a Halloween mix, I wanted it to have an unrelenting darkness to it. It can be kind of a playful darkness like “The Shankill Butchers” by The Decemberists. And there’s something kind of fun and dark while eerie about the Dead Man’s Bones tracks — they have a children’s choir on them. For the most part, I knew I was going to have to seek out the darkest stuff in my collection and that really narrowed my collection down. So, the selection was easy.
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What was the toughest part?
The hardest part is that I’m a perfectionist. Basically, I wanted to sequence it in a way that made some kind of sense. It doesn’t necessarily have a great arc, but the songs flowed into each other naturally. And, I wanted them to reflect my taste and have a variety of darkness to them. It really took me a long time. I love the songs so much, it was hard for me to cut anything. You can tell by the length of the playlist. I was asked for 20 songs and I had 60. I eventually pared it down to the nice, round number of 37.
At any point, did you want to look outside your own collection for songs?
I almost thought that looking outside of my own collection would’ve been dishonest or something. I wanted it to be mine. I have no shortage of songs that are spooky and create the perfect mood or score a Halloween party well. There was part of me that thought there must be other things out there that would be appropriate for a Halloween playlist, but I just don’t know it. Oh well. There’s a buddy of mine that I knew would be able to point me in the direction of all kinds of great stuff.
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Halloween lends itself to some great songs, but would you do a Christmas mix?
I’m more drawn to the darkness, so the Halloween list really suited me. But, I’m not even a giant Halloween partygoer or anything. I don’t really dress up. But, I like the holiday and I think the music that’s appropriate for that holiday is better than the music that’s appropriate for other holidays. But, there are some awesome Christmas songs or awesome versions of Christmas songs. Sufjan Stevens, who’s one of the most amazing musicians I’ve heard, has done so many Christmasy pieces that he originally recorded, I think, just for friends, and then ultimately released them. They’re his covers of Christmas classics and standards and traditional, mixed in with some original. Some are amazing. So, yeah, I could put together a solid Christmas mix mixed in with stuff that I’d include for nostalgia.
From “Roswell” to “Revenge,” you seem to have a thing for dark projects.
I remember someone asked me in an interview, ‘Why do you think Jack is so sad all the time?’ And I answered, ‘Well, they hired a very sad actor to play him.’ It’s kind of true. I think some of my own outlook or dark moods, whatever, finds it’s way into the roles. It’s not a transformation. It’s finding the part of myself that’s like this guy.
Listen to Wechsler’s Halloween mix for Spotify below.
“Revenge” airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.
