Who Sings the 'Happy Halloween' Vocaloid Song? Junky Wrote It for Kagamine Rin

The voice in 'Happy Halloween' is Kagamine Rin, a synthesised singer, and the Japanese Vocaloid producer Junky wrote both its words and its music. The song follows one girl through Halloween night: she goes out trick-or-treating, eats the sweets, plans pranks on the houses that give her nothing and refuses to sleep until morning. Junky posted it on the Japanese video site Niconico at 18:00 Japan time on 10 October 2014, with animation by Parmy and drawings by Chiho, and put it on YouTube the same day. Ten days earlier, on 30 September 2014, it had gone on sale as one of three new songs, the others by Pinocchio-P and otetsu, on 'Trick or Miku', a card-shaped USB stick of Halloween music that FamilyMart stores in Japan sold in a Hatsune Miku campaign. On 27 October 2026 the YouTube video had 27,152,119 views.

'Happy Halloween' made the top 50 of YouTube's daily Shorts chart for Japan on 99 days, and every one of them fell between 1 October and 11 November. We read every such chart YouTube has published, from the first, for 6 November 2023, to the one for 26 October 2026, 1,086 in all. Its only days at No. 1 were 31 October 2024 and 31 October 2025.

'Happy Halloween' meaning: the trick-or-treat night Kagamine Rin sings

The words are Japanese, with the Halloween vocabulary in English: trick or treat, party night, a bell's ding-dong-dang and a clock's ticktack. The girl opens with a question. It is about to get dark, so may she go out now? She warns that she will eat your sweets first, and the Japanese can be read with the spell on you or on the sweets. The fog is sure to thicken soon, she says, so will everyone gather? She has waited patiently and kept away from sugar, and now she wants her reward. A bell rings once, then twice, the little ghosts start to clamour, and because she will be let off today, it is time to go into town.

The chorus gives the reason for everything: because it is Halloween. Its second line is the threat, “悪戯しちゃうぞding-dong-dang” ('I'm going to play a trick on you, ding-dong-dang'). Trick or treat is going on everywhere, she sings, so won't you hand over a candy? Around her are an innocent pumpkin lantern, a tired Jack who will dance until morning and even a ghost's turnip singing la la la.

Those last two pictures are older than the pumpkins. This Jack is almost certainly the Jack of the jack-o'-lantern, the man in an Irish folk tale who wanders the night with an ember inside a hollowed vegetable. In Ireland and Scotland such lanterns were carved from turnips and potatoes, and pumpkins took their place after the custom crossed to North America.

In the bridge the greedy ghost, quite possibly the girl herself, wants 'more and more', and a house with nothing left becomes the prey of a prank. Houses that give nothing, she sings, should have toilet paper wound round and round their garden trees, which is the American trick known as TP-ing. If your lantern is lit tonight, she adds, give her something sweet. A lit lantern or porch light is the usual sign that a house welcomes trick-or-treaters.

The last chorus has a ticking clock, a dazzling pumpkin pie and a girl who, of course, ends up staying up late. This time the tired Jack will not go to bed either. The song ends with her rolling a red candy around her mouth, still unwilling to sleep. For all the threats, no monster attacks and nobody gets hurt.

Kagamine Rin, the Vocaloid voice behind 'Happy Halloween'

Kagamine Rin is software, a voice library for Vocaloid, Yamaha's singing synthesiser, made by Crypton Future Media of Sapporo from recordings of the voice actor Asami Shimoda and first sold on 27 December 2007 in one package with a boy character, Kagamine Len. A producer enters the notes and the syllables, and Vocaloid sings them.

Our listening software was slow to hear the synthesised voice as singing. The speech model heard the first words at 6.7 seconds, but the sound classifier, a program that labels each passage of a recording with the sounds it detects, did not put singing among its top five guesses until 1:23. In the first 11 seconds, although the voice has come in, the classifier heard knocking, a glockenspiel, a marimba and a ding-dong. After that come disco and dance music, then a saxophone from about 0:39 to 1:23, a violin from 1:56, and electric guitar in the chorus that begins at 2:11. The softest stretch of music, from 2:50 to 3:02, is glockenspiel and marimba, which the classifier also tagged as music for children, and the glockenspiel stays on top until 3:28. The last nine seconds, from 3:54, are knocks and a door.

'Happy Halloween' in Project SEKAI, in covers and on a 2025 remix EP

Junky put 'Happy Halloween' on streaming services on 19 October 2018, as a single with three versions: Kagamine Rin's, one sung by Hiiragi Yuka and Sana, and one by DAZBEE. The same day the singer Raon Lee posted her 'Happy Halloween' cover, which had 5,640,142 views on 27 October 2026. The song also lives inside Project SEKAI COLORFUL STAGE! feat. Hatsune Miku, the rhythm game from SEGA and Colorful Palette. It was already playable there in October 2023, when the game announced a chart for it in APPEND, a new difficulty added for the game's third anniversary. A version by the game's group MORE MORE JUMP! with Rin opens the group's SEKAI ALBUM vol.2, released on 7 February 2024. On 1 October 2025 came a remix EP curated by heykazma, with new versions by heykazma, Shöka, Shimizu Bunta, BAILEFUNK KAKEKO and Shokuhin Matsuri a.k.a. Foodman.

'Happy Halloween' on Japan's Shorts chart, 2023 to 2026

In each of the last three years the song has arrived in early October: on 1 October in 2024 at joint No. 38, on 5 October in 2025 at No. 36, and on 2 October this year at joint No. 45. It climbs through the month. On 26 October it was No. 19 in 2024, No. 18 in 2025 and No. 17 in 2026. Then it reaches No. 1 on the 31st and falls fast. On Halloween 2025 it went past Kenshi Yonezu's 'IRIS OUT', which was No. 1 on 30 October and again on 1 November, when 'Happy Halloween' was No. 2. On 4 November it was No. 31. Its latest day in any year was 11 November 2023, at No. 43, in the chart's first week. YouTube's own counter also gives it 99 days on the chart by 26 October 2026, 95 of them from 2024 on and four in November 2023.

Of the 40 most-liked among the first 60 comments and replies under the original video on 27 October, 17 welcomed other listeners back for another year or counted down to the 31st, and three more remarked that people come back every year. As with the Bollywood Diwali song we looked at this month, people go back to 'Happy Halloween' for a date on the calendar. Listeners outside Japan play it too, often without being able to read the words, as they do another Japanese song, 'Mori no Chiisana Restaurant'.

Going by the last two years, we predict that 'Happy Halloween' tops the Japanese Shorts chart on YouTube again on 31 October 2026, a third Halloween running, and drops out of that chart's top 50 by 15 November. A different No. 1 on the 31st, or a place in the top 50 on the chart for 15 November, would prove us wrong.