Giant bugs – providing an inordinately huge livelihood to gigantic entomologists and radioactively embiggened songwriters alike. Today’s playlist celebrates these disgusting animals and their gross eyes, weird legs and hard-to-pronounce carapaces. May these perversions of nature be forever not enslaving us.

• Blondie – “Attack of the Giant Ants”

On the final track of their self-titled 1976 debut, Debbie Harry and the boys smile and whoop about giant ants from space that breathe fire, eat faces and somehow cause the moon to drop out of orbit. The military ant attack breakdown in the middle of the song is a clear artistic pre-cursor to the hyper-real apocalyptic aestheticism of modern auteur Emmerich and Bay.

• The Cure – “Lullaby”

The dreadful, man-eating “spiderman” breathily described by a terrified Robert Smith on this song from The Cure’s watershed album “Disintegration” could be interpreted as either an actual human/spider hybrid, hungry for Smith’s 150 pounds of eyeliner and tears, or a super tortured metaphor for depression. The truth: Smith has a reoccurring nightmare in which he’s fiercely molested by an eight-fisted Peter Parker. It’s okay, Rob. Let it out.

• Yuji Koseki – “Mosura No Uta (Mothra’s Song)”

Every serious Godzilla fan knows that Mothra is spiritually linked to two miniature, telepathic priestesses who translate her chirps and sing her praises via this harmonized tune. For helpful information regarding Mothra’s “Character and Personality,” see the depressingly thorough Wikipedia entry.

• Rose and the Arrangement – “The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati”

The single hit from novelty tunesmiths “Rose and the Arrangement” was a ‘70’s staple of the Dr. Demento radio show. Featuring zany sound effects and punny references to a bevy of popular horror films, it’s rumored to have been used as the original temp score for Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining.”

• Alice Cooper – “Black Widow”

“Black Widow”’s vocal portion begins with Vincent Price melodramatically reading a description of the black widow’s powerful toxin and creepy mating habits, but quickly turns into a bizarre, raving treatise on the spider’s inevitable dominion over humanity. While the lyrics never explicitly state that these arachnid overlords will be giant sized, they very explicitly state that they will rape children. So, they’ll be at least medium sized. Enjoy this live video of the song, featuring spider costumes and a not-at-all-gratuitous six-minute guitar solo.