The Prettiest Nightmares
March 1964, Cortez High School Letterman’s Talent Show. A simple parody performance of Beatles songs by trackteam members and art students would become the fertilization of the egg that hatched the icon of shock rock. Vincent Furnier, Dennis Dunaway, and John Speer would soon be joined by the late Glen Buxton and John Tatum:, and then crawl across the music world’s web as The Spiders. Just two years later The Spiders bit down into the local Arizona music scene with their number one hit, "Don't Blow Your Mind.” From there, with some strategic band member changes, landing a manager who was originally a "pharmaceutical salesman" that was introduced to the band via Jimmy Hendrix, and a record deal with Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper were on their way to becoming misunderstood artistic influenced geniuses who inspired generations of major rock acts for decades to come.
From KISS, to King Diamond, to Marlyin Manson, Rob Zombie, Wednesday 13, Lady Gaga and others, Alice Cooper has been deeply influential to musicians. From Dadaism inspired stage performances, to torn apart chicken stories, to becoming the first major production of the legendary Bob Ezrin, Alice Cooper the band, and after breakup of the band in 1975, launching Vincent’s solo career as Alice, “Alice Cooper” have created memories and hits that reach generation after generation.
I recall my earliest exposure to Alice Cooper was in 1978 watching The Muppet Show, when he was the guest host. The dark horror infused aesthetic Alice had hooked me that night. I never forgot his duet with Miss Piggy performing the song “You and Me” or “Welcome to my Nightmare” with The Vile Bunch. These are probably ingrained in my memory more because of how much my grandmother and mother were not pleased about my liking Alice Cooper. They did their damnedest to get me to not buy into Alice, and maybe I didn’t. But I did buy into Alice’s horror presentation, and he is one of my very first exposures to my favorite creative genre, horror.
Last year when I started doing best of lists for SOTMV, these came to me as challenges and conversation points. This list is of my own inspirational doing. Alice Cooper has been around longer than Black Sabbath, and has just as many greatest hits list available as KISS. So, like with my previous lists, I wanted to create something that represents Alice Cooper’s best music, and not have it be fully devoted to commercial success or be a cut and paste of other list. And once again, that was not a simple task to complete since the majority of Alice’s hits are from the seventies and late eighties, and appear on other lists. In the end, after walking through a haunted forest, stopping into a groovy graveyard, talking to screaming women and losing my head at the guillotine, a best of Alice Cooper howled to life under the pale moonlight. There are three solid honorable mentions for the list.
“Dirty Diamonds”- Album: Dirty Diamonds, released 2005. The title track off what is the record that is considered a return to Alice’s classic hard rock sound deserves mention. For your consideration, I feel that this song is more like a link between 80’s Cooper and his brief run creating modern metal music, like what appeared on Brutal Planet.
“Don't Blow Your Mind”- Album: Why Don't You Love Me, released 1966. This is where it began, with The Spiders local #1 hit. A classic 60’s rock style song with Beatle influences and Alice’s darker lyrical approach. As a kid, occasionally, this song would air on the “Odies” radio station my step-father listened to. At the time I had no idea it was Alice Cooper.
“Beautiful Flyaway”- Album: Easy Action, released 1970. Featuring the vocals of the songwriter Michael Bruce rather than Alice, we have a psychedelic ballad with nods to the stylings of The Beatles and The Beach Boys. A highlight of the bands talents going beyond the frontman.
Without further decaying, Symptom of the Metalverse presents, The Prettiest Nightmares. Alice Cooper’s 13 best songs. Listen along with the playlist here.
13- “One Night Stand”- Album: The Revenge of Alice Cooper, released 2025. A full circle return for Alice Cooper, as the surviving original members of the Alice Cooper band reunite with their “Sixth Member” Bob Ezrin, to bring about Cooper’s return to the beginning. After 54 years, Ezrin is still the one "cleaning up" their sound and helping the original members (Alice Cooper, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, and Neal Smith) capture that same 1971 lightning in a bottle. Taking over lead guitar work Gyasi Heus, a Nashville-based glam-rocker who handled the majority of the lead guitar duties. With a guest appearance by Robby Krieger, and use of archival recordings and unreleased riffs from his the personal tapes of the late Glen Buxton, the record captures the vibe that existed in the earliest releases from Alice. “One Night Stand” is the best track on the record, and stands up with classic Cooper songs, shining brighter than anything released by Cooper since “Poison.”
12- “Desperado”- Album: Killer, released 1971. From the second record produced by Bob Ezrin and most known for the classic singles "Under My Wheels" and "Be My Lover", comes one of Alice’s best songs, period. Alice has told the backstory of the song being a tribute to the late Jim Morrison of the Doors, along with inspiration drawn from Lee, the "desperado" character played by Robert Vaughn in the 1960 Western film The Magnificent Seven. Bob Ezrin plays keyboards on the song as well, showing his own talents as a musician, taking him beyond the role of just the producer.
11- “The Black Widow”- Album: Welcome to my Nightmare, released 1975. One of the strongest conceptual records ever made marked the solo debut for Vincent as Alice Cooper. The album is about a young boy Steven’s nightmares and descent into madness (I can relate to this guy). “Black Widow” is most famous for it’s introduction by The Curator, the great one, Vincent Price. The monologue was written by Bob Ezrin and Alice Cooper specifically for Price. The song interpretation is open to struggle over gender dynamics due to the nature of the spider being a dominant female, while the other interpretation is that the spider simply represents a monster in Steven’s dream. My vote is cast like a demons shadow over the latter.
10- “You and Me”- Album: Lace and Whiskey, released 1977. Released from Cooper’s third record as a solo star, the song comes from a time when Alice was struggling with alcohol addiction, influencing the albums persona. The song was Cooper’s highest charting since “Only Women Bleed” and my earliest introduction to Cooper’s music.
9- “Billion Dollar Babies”- Album: Billion Dollar Babies, released 1973. The first Alice Cooper album to reach number one on the Billboard 100 was the peak of the original line-ups success. For years I assumed that the guest vocalist on the title track was Robert Plant due to the tonality of performers voice, but man I was wrong. The guest vocalist is famous English folk singer Donovan. The classic right place at the right time adage comes into play here, as Donovan was working in the room next to Alice Cooper during the recording of the album at Morgan Studios in London. The difference in vocal styles between Alice and Donovan produced a “Horrifically Beautiful Symphony.”
8- “Welcome to my Nightmare”- Album: Welcome to my Nightmare, released 1975. The title track off one of Cooper’s most recognized classics tells the totality of the character Steven’s dilemma. Haunting vocals and accompanying instrumentals create a storied horror music masterpiece. I have viewed the song as the predecessor for Metallica’s “Sanitarium.” Plus, again, I can relate to the guy in the song more than I should talk about. But hey, nothing like a little peak behind the skull and mask now and then to keep ‘em spooked.
7- “No More Mr. Nice Guy”- Album: Billion Dollar Babies, released 1973. Born as a response to public backlash and parental outrage (see my earlier comments on my mother and grandmothers thoughts on my like of Alice for evidence) the band was dealing with at the peak of their success. Allegedly Cooper wrote the lyrics about his mother’s friends at church who did not approve of Cooper’s stage show. The song is home to one of the most famous guitar riffs off all time, just as identifiable as Sabbath’s “Iron Man” or Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”, and was famously covered by Megadeth for use in the movie, “Shocker.”
6-”Hello Hooray”- Album” Billion Dollar Babies, released 1973. Show of hands, who knew this was not originally an Alice Cooper song? Written by Rolf Kempf, Bob Ezrin discovered the song and saw it’s potential as a rock anthem that would be perfect for opening shows. Steve Hunter is a guest guitarist on the song providing the melodic solo. It is the perfect show opening song for a performance like that presented by Alice Cooper. It creates the atmosphere of a grand old epic show, where the performers hearts bleed for the approval of the audience at hand.
5- “Poison”- Album: Trash, released 1989. The second coming of Alice Cooper really started with the “Constrictor” album when he returned to the music industry after a hiatus to overcome his addiction to alcohol, but his mark of his success was bitten into history’s flesh with the release of Trash and the MTV hit, “Poison.” Cowritten by Desmond Child and guitarist John McCurry, the song is Alice showing his adaption skills and ability to reach a new generation of fans.
4- “Ballad of Dwight Fry”- Album: Love it to Death, released 1971. After years of not listening to Alice Cooper, this song got me to place his music again as it became a staple in my background music for writing and the first new song I learned to play on guitar again after not playing the instrument for nearly ten years. Alice wrote the song as a tribute to the actor who famously played Renfield in Dracula (1931). The song is a cornerstone in band’s stage performance, with Alice being a straight jacketed patient who breaks free and murders the nurse caring for him at the mental hospital. Legend has it that Bob Ezrin pinned Alice under a pile of chairs to generate the sense of panic.
3- “Only Women Bleed”- Album: Welcome to my Nightmare, released 1975. Written by Alice Cooper and his guitarist Dick Wagner, the ballad is a powerful message about domestic abuse, rather than the 28-day cycle. It marked the first release in a series of ballads that broke into the top 20 for Cooper.
2- “I’m Eighteen”- Album: Love it to Death, released 1970. Once again with my list, the top two songs on this list are easily interchangeable. Coming in at second place is Alice Cooper’s breakout hit, the song that broke the band into the Billboard 100, and with its success landed the band a full length record commitment from Warner Bros. “Eighteen” was originally an eight-minute psychedelic jam filled with extended instrumental breaks. Bob Ezrin heard a hit in the long mix and chopped the song down to the three minute coming of age anthem we all know today.
1- “School’s Out”- Album: School’s Out, released 1972. This song is to Alice Cooper what “My Generation” is to The Who. The song is built around Glen Buxton’s guitar riff, and carries a mocking, defiant energy. It is a teenage anthem which reaches generation after generation of kids, making it a timeless hit. The metaphors throughout the song were misunderstood by the media at the time of release, and the song banned on some radio stations. I remember hearing the song for the first time as my freshmen year at Christ the King High School came to an end with the arrival of summer. To me, the song meant we are free from the bullshit of the educational system and hypocrisy of the chalk board wardens that placed the predetermined text in front of us all. The song is a top three anthem of all time candidate.
This list does not touch much on the releases from Alice Cooper from nineteen-ninety to twenty-twenty four. I don’t want to have you, the reader, the Alice Cooper fan, to think the material released by Alice after what appears on this list is not worth listening to. On the contrary. Brutal Planet- released 2000, is arguably Cooper’s best album since Billion Dollar Babies. It shows Alice’s adaptability, releasing something that was modern feeling for the time. Dirty Diamonds- released 2005, offers excellent tunes like the title track, and music from Alice after that point all deserves a listen. Along Came A Spider,- released 2008, features Slash and the late Ozzy Osbourne and offers a strong conceptual record about a serial killer named, Spider. There is really no lag in solid horror inspired killer Cooper tunes from the nineties on.
Alice Cooper the band and the man have been immortalized through music just as the artist and horror icons they took inspiration from were immortalized in their mediums. Maybe not the original to be a shock rocker (Arthur Brown was first), but Alice was the best to do it. From this man behind the mask to the black widow on the inside of nightmares, thank you Alice for “Horror-ific” inspirational hits!
