Haunted (Poe Album) - History

History

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, as alternative radio of 2001 was not very willing to play female artists. It reached #13 on Billboard's US Modern Rock chart. 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. "Wild" was released as a third single, garnering some radio play in the Chicago area. The single was never released commercially, but featured a shorter radio mix in addition to an acoustic/rock version of the song. 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.

The song "Haunted" was also featured at the end of the second episode of the video game Alan Wake for Xbox 360, as well as the Tai Chi Warmup in the Les Mills BodyBalance/BodyFlow program release number 54.

The album also featured samples of audio recordings made by Poe's late father, film director Tad Danielewski. The cassettes were found by Poe and Mark after their father had died and were literally audio-letters to the two of them that spanned back as far as their birth. Thus, the album is usually interpreted as a real woman (Poe) singing tributes to her deceased father (who sings back) even while telling the story of a group of fictional characters (from House of Leaves).