Haunted

Haunted is the second album by American singer/songwriter Poe, released in 2000 (see 2000 in music) after a five year hiatus from her debut album Hello in 1995. The self-produced album was created as a tribute to her father, and counterpart to her brother Mark Z. Danielewski’s novel House of Leaves.

Haunted found Poe combining traditional pop music notions with electronic, Dance and hard rock music. A critical success and largely adored by her existing fanbase, it nonetheless flopped commercially, largely due to the manner in which it was marketed. The song “Hey Pretty” was released as a promo 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 promo single, “Walk the Walk,” was released because it had been chosen as the theme song to a new TV drama called Girls Club. However, the show was canceled after two episodes. Finally, the title track was used as the theme song to the film “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2,” a box-office failure. The commercial failure of Poe’s second album contributed to the loss of her distribution contract with Atlantic Records.