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Haunted

The album Haunted was released by singer/songwriter Poe in the year 2000. After a five year hiatus from her debut album "Hello" in 1995 she released this, a totally self produced, 18 track tribute to her brother Mark Z. Danielewski's novel "House of Leaves."
                           

The album found Poe combining traditional pop music notions with electronic, dance and hard rock music. By all rights it should have been a huge success, but unfortunately all of the promotional tie-ins for the album flopped. The song "Hey Pretty" was released as a single, but Poe's vocals had been replaced with a chapter reading from her brother, so it only served to promote his novel instead. The music video for the song was deemed too racy for MTV (it showed Poe writhing around in mud in nothing but a bra.) A follow up single, "Walk the Walk," was released because it had been chosen as the theme song to a new TV drama. However, the show was cancelled after two episodes. Finally, the title track was used as the theme song to the film "Blair Witch 2: the Book of Shadows." The movie was a miserable failure. The album did not do very well, and eventually it's poor sales contributed to Poe losing her contract with Atlantic Records.

The album also featured samples of audio recordings made by Poe's late father, legendary Hollywood producer Tad Danielewski. The cassettes were found by Poe and Mark after their father had passed and were literally audio-letters to the two of them that spanned back as far as their birth. Thus the album's complexity: a real woman (Poe) sings tributes to her deceased father (who sings back) while telling the story of a group of fictional characters (from "House of Leaves").

Tracks

1.Exploration B
2.Haunted
3.Control
4.Terrible Thought
5.Walk the Walk
6. Terrified Heart
7. Wild
8. 5&½ Minute Hallway
9. Not a Virgin
10. Hey Pretty
11. Dear Johnny
12. Could've Gone Mad
13. Lemon Meringue
14. Spanish Doll
15. House of Leaves
16. Amazed
17. If You Were Here
18. Hey Pretty (Drive By 2001 Mix)

Lyric Samples

"Exploration B"
"I thought you should know/Daddy died today, he closed his eyes and he left here/At 12:03, he sends his love/He wanted you to know he isn't holding a grudge/And if you are, you should let go"

"Haunted"
"Come here, no I won't say please/One more look at the ghost before I'm gonna make it leave/Come here, I've got the pieces here/Tell them we'll gather up the splinters/Build a casket for my tears"

"Control"
"Don't mess with a little girls' dream/'Cause she's libel to grow up mean/Surpise you to find that I'm laughing/You thought that you'd find me in teras/You thought I'd be crawling the wall like a tiny/mosquito and trembling in fear"

"Terrible Thought"
"A terrible thought has crawled into my mind/Like an unwanted roomate drunk on wine/It feeds on my happiness, won't pay the rent/I must take proper measures to evict it"

"Walk the Walk"
"My daddy spent 10 years living on the outside looking in/He thought that he would never get back/He watched his dream walk across a silver screen/And he was standin' there when the theater when pitch black"

"Terrified Heart"
"Sometimes I'm terrified of my heart/Of it's constant hunger for whatever it is it wants/The way it stops./And starts."

"Wild"
"I go wild 'cause you break me open/Wild 'cause you left me here/I go wild 'cause your promises are broken/Wild, don't you get it dear?/You're not the only one who runs on instinct/No, I got instinct of my own"

"5 1/2 Minute Hallway"
"I live at the end of a five and a half minute hallway/And as far as I can see you are still miles from me in your doorway/And oh, by the way, when the landlord came today? He measured everything/I knew he'd get it wrong but I just played along"

"Not a Virgin"
"I'm not a virgin anymore, I just thought you should know/Darlin' I've been around/Yeah, I've been up and down your black/In fact I have been all over town/Down by the lake and underneath the table in my living room/Outside by the blue, blue moon"

"Hey Pretty"
"Well it's 3 A.M./I'm out here riding again/Through the wicked, winding streets of my world/I make a wrong turn, brake/And now I'm too far gone/I got a siren on my tail and that ain't the fine I'm lookin' for"

"Dear Johnny"
"Johnny dear, don't be afraid/I will keep your secret safe/Take me to the blind man who/lost you in his house of blue"

"Could've Gone Mad"
"Another day and I could've gone mad/Another day and it might've gotten bad/Another day and I might've betrayed every scruple I had"

"Lemon Meringue"
"Hold on, you gotta wait just a minute/See the cookie jar? Got my hand caught in it/Just let me try to explain/I know I've been a good girl, but I hit a limit/I know there's not a lot of logic in it/But my life's been feelin' to me (like lemon)"

"Spanish Doll"
"A stranger in this world without you/Is all that I can ever be/All I know that's pure and clear/You left it with me here/In this souvenir/Busca me"

"House of Leaves"
"I can hear myself, I'm somewhere in there/What's happening/Nobody's home/No one should brave the underworld alone"

"Amazed"
"Johnny, your suitcase was finally received/She's packed up her things and she's ready to leave/It's amazing/All of the ink that was bled from your hands/has painted a picture that she understands/It's a maze/And here by the ocean the sky's full of leaves/and what they can tell you depends on what you believe/It's amazing/The voice of my father still loud as before/It used to scare me, but not anymore"

"If You Were Here"
"If you were here/I know that you would truly be amazed/by what's become of what you made/If you were here/you would know how I treasured every day/How every single word you spoke/Echoes in me like a memory of hope/"

"Hey Pretty (Drive by 2001 Mix)"
"Keiri suggested we go for a drive in her new 2-door BMW coupe/In the parking lot, we slipped into her bucket seats/Keiri took over from there/
At nearly 90 miles per hour she zipped us up to that windy edge/ Known to some as Mullholland/that sinuous road running the ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains/Where she then proceeded to pump her vehicle in and out of turns/Sometimes dropping down to 50 miles per hour, only to immediately gun it back up to 90 again/Fast, slow, fast fast slow"