Andrew Gold's "Spooky, Scary Skeletons" Debuts at No. 35 on the Hot 100

Andrew Gold's "Spooky, Scary Skeletons (Undead Tombstone Remix)" has entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 35 on the chart dated Nov. 14, Billboard reported on Nov. 10.

The Hot 100 ranks the most popular songs in the United States each week, using sales, streams and radio airplay. The chart dated Nov. 14 counted activity from Oct. 30 to Nov. 5, a seven-day window known as the tracking week. That stretch includes Halloween, which helps explain why a spooky song is on the list.

The same report said Gold's album "Andrew Gold's Halloween Howls: Fun & Scary Music" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Kid Albums chart, which ranks albums aimed at children. It is the first Billboard No. 1 of Gold's career.

The song first came out in 1996, and Gold performed, wrote and produced it. It found a new audience in 2010, when a YouTuber paired it with Disney's 1920s cartoon "The Skeleton Dance." In 2013, the electronic duo The Living Tombstone remixed it, and that is the version now on the chart.

Gold's own career stretches far beyond Halloween. He was the son of composer Ernest Gold and singer Marni Nixon. In 1973 he joined Linda Ronstadt's band, playing piano, guitar, drums and percussion on her Hot 100 No. 1, "You're No Good."

Under his own name on Asylum Records, he had four Hot 100 hits in the 1970s. "Lonely Boy" reached No. 7 in 1977, and "Thank You for Being a Friend" climbed to No. 25 in 1978. Cynthia Fee later covered "Thank You for Being a Friend" as the theme song for "The Golden Girls," which aired on NBC from 1985 through 1992.

He also co-led the duo Wax, which scored a Hot 100 hit in 1986 with "Right Between the Eyes." As a songwriter, he wrote Wynonna's "I Saw the Light," a Hot Country Songs No. 1.

Gold died in 2011 at the age of 59. The new chart entry, and the album's No. 1, arrive fifteen years later, with a song that has been around for three decades.

For listeners who know the tune from a classroom, a costume party or a video feed, the chart entry is a reminder that a song can keep finding new listeners long after its first release.