Clown Rock Sampler
12 of the best songs from a lesser-known sub-genre
Coulrophobia is an intense fear of clowns. Although many people find clowns kinda creepy or a little scary, extreme cases of this phobia can cause nausea, panic, and anxiety. This is probably why clowns are such good fodder for rock and roll songs.
Like the most memorable rock and rollers, clowns have the power to evoke strong reactions.
Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley—for example—were dangerous, countercultural icons in their day, but are often reduced to cartoonish renderings of retro kitschy “cool” in modern pop culture.
The opposite is true of clowns according to Bad Clowns author, Benjamin Radford: “There’s an incorrect notion that clowns were once always happy and jolly and that the evil clown is a new turn on that. In fact, clowns have always been fairly ambiguous characters. … Sometimes they’re making people laugh, sometimes they’re scaring the hell out of people.”
Clowns contain multitudes: good and evil; light and dark; huggy and stabby.
One surefire way to push societal boundaries is to use shock and fear. Evil clown panics in recent years are a great example of this—a self-perpetuating meme based on pre-existing fears that created a media frenzy. For the longest time…
