Ghost, the Swedish satanic metal band that blew up during the summer of 2022 when their song “Mary On A Cross” went viral on TikTok, now has over 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify—rising from around 2 million before summer of 2021. While Ghost has seen massive success due to the blow up of their song, they were popular and successful even before that with their 2015 Grammy win for “Best Metal Performance” for their song “Cirice.”
However, since the blow up of that song, Ghost saw a boost in fame and an influx of new fans, including myself, with monthly Spotify listeners peaking at 12 million during September of 2022.
With those new fans came new haters as well—people who claim Ghost doesn’t make metal music anymore, or what Ghost produces is “Scooby-Doo chase music.”
While I personally find most of their songs wonderful regardless of how heavy they seem, this begs the question… which type of song is more popular: metal or not?
Ghost does have variety to the sound of their songs, with some being more rhythmic and lyrical, and others leaning more heavily into that satanic metal trope. But what determines whether music is considered metal? Intense bass? Screaming that near-bursts your eardrums? Pyrotechnics during shows?
Ghost’s top 10 streamed songs include heavier songs and more rhythmic, poppy songs, but visualizing that is a finicky thing. It can be broken down to a more manageable and understandable level, and I use two different qualifiers to do so—the sound levels along with the frequency of words in the songs that make religious, satanic, supernatural, or magic references.
Frequency of reference in Ghost’s songs
The songs Ghost produces typically make reference in one way or another to religious concepts, but the frequency of these in each song varies greatly. “Year Zero” from the Infestissumam album contains a whopping 58 references to religious, satanic, or otherwise supernatural concepts—the majority of these being the listing of the names of figures from the biblical hell. “Mary On A Cross,” from the album Seven Inches of Satanic Panic, comes in second for the most frequent with 24, though these are all in reference to the biblical figure Mary. Next in line comes “Ritual” from the Opus Eponymous album with 19 total satanic or religious words.
“Call Me Little Sunshine” and “Dance Macabre” from the Impera and Prequelle albums respectively are tied with 12 references each, followed by “He is” from Meliora with nine. After that, we have another tie with “Square Hammer” and “Spillways” from Popestar and Impera respectively, both containing six references to satanic, religious, or supernatural concepts. “Rats” from Prequelle makes five references throughout its duration. Last, but certainly not least, the song “Cirice” from Meliora contains just three references in it—though the entire song conceptually is about manipulation in churches.
Visualizing the sound of Ghost
Keeping this in mind, I moved to the second criteria—the visualized soundwaves of each song. The order of these songs is determined by both how high the noise levels are and how sharp the spikes and drops in the sound are.
Once again, “Year Zero” is at the top of the chart for volume, with both its volume fairly consistently sitting at the highest measurable line and its spiking drops in volume being the most extreme. After that, “Square Hammer” and “Ritual” take second and third place in regards to their soundwaves. “Square Hammer” has a good portion of the song where its volume is a consistent solid line at the top of the measuring area, but it doesn’t make first place because the beginning of the song has a build up that more gradually leads into the main song. It places above “Ritual” because of that consistent volume line in the main song, as its volume does not maintain as strongly at the top of the scale despite having more sharp drops in volume at certain points.
Following after is “Rats,” which has its points of consistent volume and intense changes in volume level, but does not reach the same extent that “Ritual” does. Fifth through seventh place are home to “Spillways,” “He Is,” and “Mary On A Cross” respectively, because they aren’t as intense volume-wise nor do they have the sharp volume spikes across the higher placing songs. We get to eighth place with “Cirice,” where we see a lot more volume changes throughout the song and points where the drops are not sharp, but instead more gradual and fluid.
From eighth place onwards, a noticeable trend begins to emerge where the less metal songs have a visible s-curve to their soundwaves. As each song progresses, the flow is displayed via the soundwaves slowly rising up and down in certain places. Ninth place goes to “Call Me Little Sunshine,” which has little to no noticeable sharp drops in volume, instead maintaining that flowing rise and fall with one to two exceptions. The spot for 10th place goes to the energetic “Dance Macabre,” where again we see no sharp drops in volume and a consistent flowing S-curve throughout the song.
Ranking the top ten: most metal to least metal
With the averages between the two factors of word frequency and soundwaves, the songs ranked from most metal to least metal read as follows:
- Year Zero
- Ritual
- Square Hammer
- Rats
- Mary On A Cross
- He Is
- Call Me Little Sunshine
- Spillways
- Cirice
- Dance Macabre
When comparing this to the chart listing the top 10 most streamed Ghost songs, we get this list:
While there are some of the more metal songs on the higher ends of the ranking scale, the top two metal songs don’t even make the top four most streamed Ghost songs. “Square Hammer” does manage to take second place in streams, but overall the rankings of more metal songs versus less metal songs on the board are fairly evenly distributed. It surely seems both ironic and inaccurate that “Cirice” ended up ranked so low on the metal list when Ghost’s Grammy is attributed to this very song in the metal category, but this ranking only takes the two factors into consideration to ensure the data remains simple.
As a fan of the band itself who is familiar with all of the songs on this list, I was simultaneously surprised and not surprised at the resulting data distribution. Due to my familiarity with social media such as TikTok, I know how “going viral” can affect a band and its songs, as exemplified by the song “Mary On A Cross” being top of the charts for Ghost’s most streamed songs. I figured that this could have impacted the numbers and order of songs on the charts, depending on how viral a song went.
Ghost’s boost in popularity in August 2021 could certainly have affected how this turned out. Before then, would the top 10 songs be completely different? Would more of the metal songs be higher on the charts? The new wave of interest in the band has brought fans from all walks of life, and that impacts the data severely, as now it is not only the hardcore metal lovers listening to Ghost, but anyone and everyone can. As Ghost’s popularity grows and new music is released, I can only wonder how the data will change, and if more metal songs will climb the ranks or if the distribution will remain relatively the same.
Mackenzie Mercer is a 2D Animator and Writer pursuing degrees at Savannah College of Art and Design. They are pursuing their creativity through the means they love, and work to grow their skills every day. Mackenzie is an aspiring author who also has dreams of creating their own original animated content.
