(It's A) Monster's Holiday — Buck Owens Lyrics

Song Facts:

• Album: Featured on the album "It's a Monster's Holiday" by Buck Owens.


• Genre: Country, with elements of novelty and humor.


• Lyricist: Buck Owens.


• Composer: Buck Owens.

Awards/Nominations: None pointed out specifically for this track, but generally, Buck Owens is a celebrated artist with several awards for his work throughout his career.

• Historical Facts: The song feeds the 1970s craze for horror-themed novelty songs and movies—films, which were going on in popular culture at the time.

- Information on Soundtrack: listed as part of the "Robot Dreams" soundtrack, which would either mean some thematic or literal inclusion in a project having to do with dreams, horror, or both.

Annotations and Meaning:

"Monster's Holiday" is a comic horror story, with all your ever-common ghouls like Frankenstein, the Wolfman, and Dracula—plus hosts of other weird creatures such as gremlins, goblins, and dragons. The movie weaves iconic monsters into a story that plays much like a child's nightmare or a kind of horror story, filled with gauzy and colorful production design.

Literal Interpretation:

The words narrate a situation whereby the speaker, speaking first, gets a roll call of monsters one by one, just like that of a student in the class. It starts with a "monster's roll call," speaking of the three frighteners: Frankenstein, the Wolfman, and Dracula, apparently horrifying but jolly. The chorus itself is spot-on with their catchy line "Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum," linking the chorus with that classic line from "Jack and the Beanstalk," but doing so intrinsically through their childhood fairy tales with the monster theme.

Thematic Interpretation:

Thematically, the song fears the fear of the dark and the unknown, with humor and overblown situations. The use of monsters and vivid scenes of getting chased or frightened inherently just taps into the love of horror and the supernatural in most popular cultures. But the smart voice and the kind of courage the narrator has ("You may get me, but, brother, let me tell ya, it's gonna be after the fight") turn what could have been scary into something almost raucous.
The fear is often co-presented with humor. The playful nature of the monstrous characters does not entertain but throws some light onto the fact of human conditioning: from confronting fears to finding the thrill of scaring or even finally being able to come out on top with spirit against fear, no matter how playful and imaginary.

Cultural Significance:

"This song sums up the era when horror characters had been and are still a very large part of pop culture, especially in the movies and on television. It does seem to harken more towards the innocent engagement with horror, where monsters were as much part of children's entertainment as they were for adults. But the very fact that Buck Owens puts these characters into a country song really attests to the universality of these horror figures, and more to a playful side of country music that actually does succeed in bringing genres—and most importantly, perhaps, themes—together in a way not previously thought possible.
"Monster's Holiday," in short, "enlightens and rekindles the fun-filled, frolicsome aspects of horror, where horror once incorporated much fun with fright." Pulled the listeners to the world of monsters in a very creative and fanciful monster mash-up. Thus, it proved that Buck Owens was flexible and creative in the most original way in his story-telling through music.