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Goth is many things:

It's a Germanic tribe, a style of architecture, a type of literature, of film, it's a youth movement.

What ties most of these things together is a sense of dark romanticism.

But despite Marilyn Manson and My Chemical Romance being infamous for their adoption of Gothic fashion,

their music isn't what would traditionally be classified as goth.

To quote Sasha Geffen of Pitchfork:

So while any youth dressed in black with a fondness for obvious makeup can be dubbed "goth"

doesn't mean that they listen to goth music.

That is a separate thing with its own sonic template.

So as the night's grow increasingly cold and dark, join me in discovering

how we got to the point where goth became a defined genre with a look, sound and lyrical preferences.

This is how Goth became Goth.

Perhaps the first instance of the darkness being put front and center, both sonically and aesthetically in pop music

is on "I Put a Spell on You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins from 1956.

Hawkins recorded his first attempt of the song in late 1955

as a waltz-time blues ballad inspired by Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love"

This version takes the song seriously,

much like the better charting covers of the song by Nina Simone

and Creedence Clearwater Revival:

It is performed as a love song with standard blues vocal.

Changing label in 1956 Hawkins and his band decided to re-record "I Put a Spell on You"

but producer Arnold Maxin believed that they were too stiff:

What Hawkins did with the song was to act it, fully embody the theatre of literally bewitching someone,

screaming, grunting and moaning throughout.

It was so different that it was banned from radio due to his outrageous cannibalistic style.

But despite never charting the song gained a cult following

eventually selling over a million copies.

"I Put a Spell on You" is the first step towards the more flamboyant, darker-minded pop music

that would encompass the best of punk, post-punk and eventually goth

but this theatre was also brought to the floor in his live show.

On stage he would rise out of a coffin, wear a cape and use dry ice as a part of his act.

Future shock rockers like Arthur Brown, Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson

all can be traced back to Screamin' Jay Hawkins and his surreal take on "I Put a Spell on You."

On the cusp of psychedelic rock in Los Angeles were The Doors

defined by their extended jams, blaring organ, darkly poetic lyrics and frontman Jim Morrison's raw sex appeal.

Their debut self-titled album was released in January 1967.

"Light My Fire," despite getting the group banned from The Ed Sullivan Show for the line:

got the band into the pop spotlight and their first number-one single.

But the album had more darkness than a simple drug reference,

especially present on the 11 minute closer "The End:"

The Doors were the first group to be dubbed "gothic" rock in print

in a live review by John Stickney in October 1967:

Initially written as a three-minute pop tune about Morrison's breakup with a girlfriend,

the track evolved through repeated airings at the band's resident Whiskey-A-Go-Go.

Its funereal organ, subdued jazz drums and whirring Eastern inspired guitar lines

slow burn into a "fuck"-loaded crescendo by the midpoint:

The lyrics focus on the most morbid of things: of death, dying and of Oedipal desire.

Of the repeated phrase

Morrison explained:

As well as being a very morbid boy with the touch of the theatrical,

Morrison would also be a vocal template for goth singers to replicate,

a deep droning baritone adopted by Joy Division's Ian Curtis and the Sisters of Mercy's Andrew Eldritch.

The Velvet Underground are a pivotal band,

pretty much any Rock-centric genre that has burst forth since the end of the 60s

can probably be traced back through their output:

Punk is the obvious one but also art rock, krautrock, shoegaze, twee, no wave and beyond.

So course goth is there as well.

Its blueprint is audible in the New York band's iconic self-titled 1967 album,

specifically on tracks "Venus in Furs"

and "All Tomorrow's Parties."

MTV's Kurt Loder described the latter in 1984 as "a mesmerizing goth rock epic."

Both songs content lyrically is much darker than what had previously been sung about in pop music

with "Venus in Furs" tales of BDSM and "All Tomorrow's Parties" shadowy caricatures.

The combination seems like an obvious step forward to Velvets' songwriter Lou Reed:

The Velvet Underground's version of rock is eccentric and cataclysmic.

a droning rhythm combined with pummeling piano work and the siren song of the vocals.

On both the aforementioned songs Reed uses what he describes as "ostrich guitar" tuning

consisting of all the strings tuned to the same note which gives the guitar a unique droning quality when played:

the element that really makes the song stand out in a proto-Goth context is singer Nico.

The German-born vocalist was described by rock critic Richard Goldstein as:

Within the next year Nico would leave the Velvet Underground and continue her impact on future Goths elsewhere.

Nico's debut solo effort Chelsea Girl was written by various other artists

including The Velvet Underground's John Cale and Lou Reed as well as Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne.

After this Nico took some advice from the Doors' Jim Morrison for a follow-up,

moved out West and wrote an album of original material.

The result was an album much more faithful to the oddly original artist that Nico was,

and one of the defining albums in proto goth: 1968's The Marble Index.

The album was a significant move forward for Nico musically but also in who she was as an artist.

John Cale said:

As such to coincide with the recording and release of The Marble Index, Nico started wearing all black and dyed her hair blood-red.

This may give Nico claim to the title of first modern goth girl.

Quite unlike anything that had come before or after, The Marble Index with tracks like "The Frozen Ground" and "Facing the Wind"

feature Nico's out of tune harmonium and compositions by John Cale.

Separate from The Velvet Underground's droning guitars, these tracks dwelt within a dark ambience

consisting of violas, hammered out piano clusters and off-kilter percussion.

The whole album is barely 30 minutes long consisting of eight of the twelve songs Nico had written for the project

which was about as much as producer Frazier Mohawk could stand without starting to feel suicidal.

This bleak beautiful work captured an internal glamour but marked itself as wholly singular.

It did not have the inklings of folk that characterized her debut,

but it was too uninterested in song structure to be truly seen as rock or pop.

This was the Nico of "All Tomorrow's Parties," a doom bringer with a deeply sonorous voice melded with pre-pop musicality.

This ambient nature would be replicated in later goth music, whether in the atmosphere of the Cocteau Twins

or the simplistic spacious compositions of Bauhaus and Joy Division.

Her voice can be heard in Siouxsie Sioux, Bat For Lashes and even Bjork.

There were moments that would inspire future Goths in the gaps between hard rock and metal,

whether it be the lumbering pace and haunted organ of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"

or the atmospherics and witch-fiction of Black Sabbath debut.

But a key band in the aesthetics and theatrics of goth culture were Alice Cooper and their self-titled frontman.

Taking the flamboyant darkness of Screamin' Jay Hawkins and bringing it up to date within a 70s context,

Cooper employed capes, proto corpse makeup and various forms of staged suicide and mutilation in his live show.

Alice Cooper realized early on that the more morbid side of things could be lyrically rich.

One such example features on his 1971 Killer album, the controversial “Dead Babies”

The track is almost cinematic in the way it combines atmospheric sound effects to tell its story of a mother uninterested in raising a child.

When paired with the album's title track on stage audiences would see Cooper chopping apart baby dolls

and climax with the ritual hanging of Cooper.

For his stage antics and persona has a direct link to 90's Shock Rock kings Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie,

his music would also be important to the late 70's punk scene,

John Lydon of The Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd has stated that Killer is the greatest rock album of all time,

while Damned singer Dave Vanian's preference for vampiric attire can be linked to Cooper.

While it's generally assumed that goth evolved from Punk,

the dark-hued tendencies The Damned and Siouxsie and The Banshees bridging the gap,

glam rock is where Goth's influence started in earnest.

Aesthetically, there's a short space between the two genres

with glam's sexual ambiguity, attraction to eyeliner and pale foundation, and the exaggerated clothing choices mirroring those of gothic culture.

Sure, T. Rex, Roxy Music and David Bowie were more into glitter than their gloomy siblings ever would be,

but there's a reason why all the key British goth bands list at least one of them as a key influence.

Just listen to the sinister organ infected slow-burn of Roxy Music's "In Every Dream Home A Heartache"

predating goth's sexual darkness by being partly a love song to an inflatable doll:

Breaking with Roxy Music in 1973 after realising that he would never wrestle creative control away from Bryan Ferry,

Brian Eno's solo career also features moments of definite proto goth interest,

whether it be the abstract instrumental cacophonies present on "Blank Frank,"

or the ultra creepy "Third Uncle"

the latter possesses a menacing almost mechanical drumbeat, staccato guitar work and Brian Eno's hypnotic monotone vocal,

a sonic template that Joy Division would take for their own amid Martin Hannett's spacious production on Unknown Pleasures five years later.

Bauhaus would cover the song on their 1982 The Sky's Gone Out EP, somehow making the song less intensely disturbing in the process.

Eno would later work with post-glam Bowie on his Berlin Trilogy of albums.

Their experiments in ambience and electronic music would be touchstones in goth influence,

1977's Low being named by The Cure's Robert Smith as his favourite LP of all time.

New York's Suicide had been a band since 1969 and had been one of the first bands to self-identify as punk.

But their style went beyond the over-revved guitars and double-time drums of their CBGB-based contemporaries.

Using drum machines and early synths, Suicide created some of the most original music of the era

but this originality drew ire wherever they went.

But their debut's most deeply disturbing and much deeply gothic work was the 10-minute and change epic "Frankie Teardrop:"

Over Martin Rev's minimalist beat and pulsing synth-work vocalist Alan Vega in his agitated croon

tells the unrelenting tale of a young father and factory worker driven to insanity by his poverty,

to the point of killing his wife, child and then himself.

Author Nick Hornby described it in his book 31 Songs as something you would listen to "only once,"

and the reason for this is clear.

The song is legitimately terrifying, peppered with Vega's blood-curdling screeches that would unease the most veteran horror fans.

He told The Guardian in 2008:

Producer Craig Leon had previously worked with Lee "Scratch" Perry and Bob Marley so added dub reggae reverb to the track, especially on the vocals,

a technique that would later be recycled by the early Goths.

Any band goth or not that later used a drum machine and synths have a debt to Suicide.

Another New York-based band that extended what goth would become were The Cramps.

Their founding members Lux Interior and Poison Ivy Rorschach bonded over share love of obscure rock and roll records,

the kind of stuff that was attempting to be the threat to society that Elvis Presley and Little Richard were implied to be.

By 1977, they were recreating this rough-around-the-edges rockabilly into their own form,

sped-up, distorted and mashed up with B-Movie characters and themes in a form they dubbed "Psychobilly."

While their first single was a cover of the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird,"

their second would define their personal template, the raucous horror themed "Human Fly."

There had been songs that featured horror creatures prior to "Human Fly," classic Halloween staple the "Monster Mash" is one example

but rarely had they been played with such commitment to the dark theatre of the subject,

"Human Fly" wasn't just a novelty based on the 1958 B-Movie horror,

Lux's Elvis hiccup delivery made him feel like it was an actual human fly.

To show their garage rock roots there's even a reference to ? & The Mysterians.

The Cramps were the first punk bands to use horror ephemera in their work but they wouldn't be the last:

The Misfits' splatter-themed "Bullet" would be released the same year,

while the Damned, 45 Grave, and much later AFI, My Chemical Romance and Creeper would continue in this horror punk tradition.

Punk was definitely a stepping stone towards goth.

As a movement especially in the UK, punk made it so that music alternative to the mainstream could get a look-in,

it made it so that loud angry music could be seen as legitimate and that you could dress whatever way you felt like dressing.

One of the last first way British punk bands to get signed to a major label were Siouxsie and the Banshees.

Their front woman Siouxsie Sioux was famed for her exquisite eye makeup, inspired by Egyptian designs, and electroshock black hair.

But her band's music was one the first to be dubbed post-punk:

Using sounds and instrumentation that was unheard of in punk as well as songs that weren't just a race to the finish,

Sioux's band had a huge impact on future goths.

Said Robert Smith of The Cure:

Later, Siouxsie and The Banshees and the Cure would move closer to goth sonically on albums like Juju and Pornography respectively

The other main post-punk band to have a lasting impact on goth was Joy Division

with their dark songs with dark themes.

See the almost-Sabbath hopeless doom of "New Dawn Fades."

Their 1979 album Unknown Pleasures aided with Martin Hannett's cavernous production

would be an influence on things to come.

Its echoes were echoed in Bauhaus, Killing Joke and the Southern Death Cult.

But this is also the point where the lines between post-punk and goth get hazy.

Goth is a younger sibling of post-punk, a post-post-punk if you will,

but Hannett in 1979 described Joy Division as "Dancing music with Gothic overtones."

Bauhaus formed in Northampton, England in 1978.

Their debut single 1979's "Bela Lugosi's Dead" was a towering monolith of a tune, nine minutes plus of ominous bassline,

droning dub-reggae influenced guitar work,

scratchy bone-rattling drums

and darkly intoned lyrics about a vampiric ritual.

For all intents and purposes, this is the start of gothic rock proper:

Despite frequently being dubbed as the first goth rock song, Bauhaus hated the tag

starting a tradition of goth bands never self identifying as such.

From "Bela Lugosi's Dead" gothic rock had risen, energised by what had come before:

the theatrical delivery of Screamin' Jay Hawkins,

the deadpan croon of Jim Morrison,

the atmospheric drones of The Velvet Underground and Nico,

the shadow of Bowie,

the staccato guitars of Brian Eno,

the dub reverb of Suicide and Joy Division,

and the monster movie worship of The Cramps,

all compressed down to just shy of 10 minutes of pure gothic rock.

Various other bands would help form the genre into its definitive form

from The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Killing Joke and The Birthday Party.

Goth still exists today but has changed in appearance and sound.

Compared the work of Creeper

or Jenny Hval

to Bauhaus

and these things are not the same.

But wherever there is darkness in music, inner torment, monster worship or dressing all in black

Goth will be there, as it always has been immortal,

undead, undead, undead...

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