Mind-Control Music

Just listen to the music and let your mind go...

"Using music to control people. Why does that sound so familiar?"

— Tucker, Danny Phantom, "Pirate Radio"

Music has great power. It can soothe the savage beast, inspire courage in the hearts of men with a stirring march, or bring tears to your eyes with a eulogy of loss and longing. Is it really such a stretch to assume that, with the right resonance, the right voice, the right instrument, it can fully control the very hearts of man?

Quite often, however, the enchantment lasts only as long as the song does... but depending on the particulars, it may do anything from simply putting everyone who hears it into a paralytic trance, to inflicting a specific, overpowering compulsion (such as homicidal rage or suicidal despair) to putting them under full and permanent More than Mind Control.

This is the Sirens' preferred hunting method and indeed pops up a lot in mythology. The Evil Diva also has a good chance of utilizing her music to enslave her fans. A Snake Charmer often uses this kind of music as well. May involve Subliminal Seduction. Subtrope of Magic Music. Inverted by The Music Meister who uses Mind Control to make music (although the Trope Namer did both). Compare Involuntary Dance.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The second season of Black Butler featured an Armonica (also known as a Glass Harmonica or a Hydrocrystalophone) being used to control a ballroom filled with noble guests, turning them into savage killers. Amusingly enough, it was countered by Sebastian playing a Glass Harp, also known as an Angelic Organ - an instrument that uses a similar principle.
• The Parapara brothers from Dragon Ball GT use a stereo to cause their opponents to uncontrollably mimic their dancing, leaving them open to attack.
• Kiddy Grade features one instance where a song is used to broadcast a mind-control signal.
• Used in episode 79 of Lupin III: Part II by Kyoransky, an eccentric musician and the episode's villain. Whoever hears Kyoransky's music sets out to attack Lupin in a violent rage.
• Macross:
  • Macross Plus has Virtual Idol Sharon Apple paralyze an entire world with her hit single, 'Information High'. Listening to it, you can kinda' feel how it might work. It's strangely hypnotic, especially when combined with her light show.
  • In Macross Delta, it's revealed that those infected by Var Syndrome are susceptible to being mind-controlled by the songs of Windermere's Wind Singer; in fact, Windermere is deliberately spreading Var for this very reason.
• My Bride is a Mermaid: Lunar Edomae's Song of War turns those who hear it into bloodthirsty berserkers under her command.
• Brook from One Piece plays music that can influence the actions of others by "reaching to their very souls". This is seen when he causes an entire stadium to riot against the Marines.
• The original Read or Die OVA was centered around a group of villains trying to put together a particular, lost symphony by Mozart, which had the power to make anyone who heard it so utterly depressed that they would instantly commit suicide by whatever means was closest at hand. Dubbed 'The Suicide Symphony', for obvious reasons.
• Samurai Pizza Cats: One episode has the wind-up Taiko No. 3 use the drum on its stomach to force a crowd out to the Shogun's temple, in an attempt to cause a riot and force the Shogun's resignation.

Asian Animation

• Happy Heroes: The hypnotizing monster in Season 2 episode 16 hypnotizes people by playing a violin.

Comic Books

• Arak: Son of Thunder: Satyricus can use his pan flute to elicit emotions in his listeners that vary from lust to terror.
• Domino Lady: In the Eros Comix miniseries, the villains learn that the flute the natives use to control the dinosaurs can also be used to control the natives, and use it to take control of the tribe and set themselves up as kings.
• The Flash:
  • The villainous Fiddler is a master hypnotist who can focus his abilities through his violin. His successors are Virtuoso of the Suicide Squad and Hawkman enemy Thrasher (who uses an electric guitar).
  • An ex-villain and ally, the Pied Piper. He can control people with his music from his sophisticated flute capable of hypnotizing anyone within range of its sound.
• House of Mystery: On the cover of issue #152◊, an organ grinder's music causes people to give his monkey money.
• The Phantom: In one story, the titular hero is rummaging through the various old treasures found within the skull cave and comes across a small flute. Out of plain curiosity, he starts playing it only for him to after a while hear people shouting behind him causing him to turn around and realize that all of the children from a nearby outdoor school are following him. Some quick research later he finds that the flute is the very same as the one that belonged to The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The rest of the story then shifts to the past telling the story of how the flute came into the family's possession and all the mind-controlling chaos the flute caused.
• Spider-Man: In Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #24, Spider-Man encounters Antoine Delsoin, who uses a guitar that produces hypnotic sound waves to rob people as the Hypno-Hustler.
• Superlópez: A rock band allied with the mob uses this.
• Superman: In "The Pied Piper of Steel" (Action Comics 398, March 1971), Clark's first television assignment is to cover a Woodstock-like rock concert, where he observes that "the kids" mindlessly obey whatever the lyrics say. The "hypnotic power of rock" was an actual concern of Moral Guardians at the time. In the story, it turns out to be a Mad Scientist with a Mind-Control Device.
• Shazam!: In Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam, a villain named Axe has a guitar that can hypnotize people. He gets a whole crowd of adults and Mary under his spell, forcing Billy, who temporarily has to avoid turning into Captain Marvel, to figure out how to stop him alone.

Fan Works

• "The Smurphony of the Night" from the Empath: The Luckiest Smurf story of the same name was used by Lord Vladimir Smurfula to control Smurfette's mind to draw her closer to him. Near the end of the story, Empath is able to disrupt its effect on Smurfette by whistling the Smurfs theme song.
• Lullaby from Ultimate Sleepwalker uses her singing to brainwash people into being her personal thugs (or, in Rick's case, her boy toys). Sleepwalker is immune to her singing, being an alien, and Lullaby's control is usually broken when she is silenced.
• The Life and Times of a Winning Pony: The rusalka’s song in the side story “The Incredibly Thrilling Investigation of Storm Kicker”, which hypnotizes ponies and turns them into thralls under the rusalka’s control.
• RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: A side-story has Octavia facing a musician who uses an enchanted guitar to control people, mainly into listening to and buying his albums, though there are hints it could do more. Octavia is able to resist his music because the guy's a talentless hack.

Films — Animation

• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks: The Dazzlings naturally employ this, as the three of them are both sirens and Evil Divas. They mostly use it as a Hate Plague, but the influence they exert on Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna heavily implies that they're capable of more traditional mind control as well. One of their songs, "Under Our Spell," is about this in addition to being it. Of course, they don't perform it until it's already too late to resist.
• Home on the Range: Cattle rustler Alameda Slim uses mind-control yodeling to put all the cows under his control. Luckily, tone-deaf Grace is immune to it and manages to snap Maggie and Calloway back to their senses.
• The titular magic flute in The Smurfs and the Magic Flute makes people dance when they hear it.

Films — Live-Action

• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: The Talocans utilize "sonic hypnosis", vocalizing in such a way to place humans in their control and forcing them to commit suicide by jumping into the sea.
• Danger Diva: Devi is able to both energize and soothe the masses with her voice, letting them power the corporate machines with brainwaves.
• Help!: In a scene dropped from the final movie, The Beatles, at an acting school, are put into a trance by droning music played by Clang and his thugs. A scene that was used has them trying again, all crammed in a phone booth calling the band up while they're in Scotland Yard. Clang intones "Go... to... the... window!... Go... to... the... window!"
• Hocus Pocus: The witches keep the adults from stopping them using the song "I Put A Spell On You". The youngest later uses her own siren-like singing to lure children to the witches' house.
• Josie and the Pussycats (2001) features a plot to build subliminal messages into the music of manufactured pop bands.
• The Kovak Box: The song "Gloomy Sunday" is used as a suicide trigger.
• Pretty Cool Too: The Genie works by emitting a special noise that forces anyone who hears it to obey any command they hear, but it can also contain commands in itself.
• Siren (2010): Silka is a siren, and her song has magical properties. Sung softly, it can hypnotise. Sung loudly, it can deafen and drive mad.
• Suicide Circle: It's implied a popular music group may be subliminally responsible for all the suicides.
• They Cloned Tyrone: One of the conspiracy’s methods of mind control is music that can alter moods or hypnotize people into doing their bidding.
• Zoolander: The Musical Trigger for Derick's brainwashing to kick in and have him assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia was a remix of the song "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood (the justification being that the villain was The Pete Best of the group), which they also played while brainwashing him.

Literature

• Susan Cooper's novel The Dark is Rising. Will is about to experience the power of the Dark.
  And the singing began.
  It was wordless; it came in the wind; it was a thin, high, cold whine with no definable tune or pattern. It came from a long way off, and it was not pleasant to hear. But it held him transfixed, turning his thoughts away from their proper direction, turning them away from everything except contemplation of whatever happened to be closest at hand. [snip] As he listened to the singing, he saw a twig on a low branch of the beech close to his head that seemed for no reason so totally enthralling that he could do nothing but gaze at it, as if it contained the whole world. He stared for so long, his eyes moving very gradually along the tiny twig and back again, that he felt as if several months had passed, while the high, strange singing went on and on in the sky from its distant beginnings. And then suddenly it stopped, and he was left standing dazed with his nose almost touching a very ordinary beech twig.
  He knew then that the Dark had its own way of putting even an Old One outside Time for a space, if they needed a space for their own magic.
• The sirens in Our Bloody Pearl have this ability.
• The Lord of the Rings.
  • In The Fellowship of the Ring both Tom Bombadil and Old Man Willow can affect other creatures' minds by singing.
  • In The Silmarillion Lúthien Tinúviel gains control over Morgoth himself by singing to him.
• This trope is the focus of Trill, a short story by Shanna Germain. The protagonist is something of a Pied Piper analogue.
• Coda (2013) has this with the Corp's music being equivalent to a drug. It can control what you see, think, and feel, and can even kill you.
• The Lady of the Green Kirtle in The Silver Chair used a monotonous melody played on a mandolin-like instrument (combined with a sweet-smelling powder) to make her victims receptive to her suggestions. The effect can be resisted, but doing so takes phenomenal willpower.
• Implied in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. One of the magical items found in the Order's headquarters is a music box that, when played, makes the listeners feel drowsy and sluggish. Snapping it shut ends the enchantment, which allows them to throw the music box out.
• In Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, the professor plays Cher's greatest hits to the gerbils in order to make them turn evil.
• Isaac Asimov's "The Mule": Magnifico the jester uses a special musical instrument/holographic projector called a Visi-Sonor which amplifies his own Psychic Powers to influence people's emotions and, in at least one case, to actually kill someone.
• Black Badge: In Cold as Hell, a goat-like Nephilim has a bone harmonica that it plays to control and to speak through others. For others, playing a few notes on the harmonica hypnotizes beings into obeying the wielder's commands.
• In The Mermaid Summer, the mermaid's song can control anyone into doing anything. She punishes Eric for his scepticism by forcing him to crash his fishing boat, almost drowning him and his crew. Later, when Anna won't give the mermaid her comb, she forces Anna to walk to the shore and almost drown herself as a threat. In the end, she uses her voice to make Eric come home to his family.
• The plot of Genocidal Organ involves the hunt for a linguistics expert who's discovered a language of genocide and is using it as a Hate Plague. It's implied at one point that this can be spread via music, and the protagonist has to kill a fellow soldier when he's affected.

Live-Action TV

• Adam Adamant Lives!: The villains in "Sing a Song of Danger" plan to use a subliminal message embedded in records to cause fans to rob banks and deliver the money to them through fan clubs. They use another album to try to compel Adam to murder Georgina.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In season 7, the First Evil brainwashes reformed vampire Spike into killing humans again; the trigger is the folk song "Early One Morning".
• Doctor Who:
  • One (lost) episode of the First Doctor serial "The Celestial Toymaker" has Dodo and Steven come to a dance floor, with the supposed prize of the TARDIS and possible escape waiting on the other side of the room. However, as soon as they come into contact with the dance floor, music starts to play, and they find their feet magically compelled to dance. Steven and Dodo must find a way to overcome the magic power of the music long enough to make it to the other side of the floor and their chance at escape.
  • Harold Saxon/The Master uses a downplayed example in "The Sound of Drums". He uses a worldwide network of satellites to project the four-tick drumbeat he hears onto the population, with their subconscious absorbing the rhythm and the messages that come with it, telling them to "Vote Saxon", and "Believe in Me". The Doctor explains that anything more powerful would be questioned, but something so subtle would go unnoticed by most.
• The villain Glitter Rock uses mind-control music in one episode of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.
• An episode of Get Smart has Max and 99 fighting "The Groovy Guru" (played by Larry Storch), who is producing music with subliminal messages aimed to get kids to overthrow the government and authorities. While the kids are supposed to be affected by subliminal mind control signals, the lyrics aren't too subtle, either.
  Thrill, thrill, thrill!
  Kill, kill, kill!
  Make a scene,
  Knock off the Dean.
  
  Yea yea yea,
  Bump off a square,
  That's what it's about
  Hate is in.
  Love is out.
• Heroes has a downplayed example with Emma, a deaf woman whose main power of "enhanced synesthesia" allows her to see sound waves as bright, flowing colors. A secondary power, though, gives her the ability to naturally draw others to her while she plays her cello. It's not exactly mind control, in that people aren't being robbed of their free will — they simply gather around to listen. Regardless, it's still incredibly dangerous when combined with the villainous Samuel Sullivan's terrakinesis — he grows stronger as more individuals with enhanced abilities gather around him, so his Evil Plan in Season Five is to use Emma's "siren song" to bring thousands of people to the carnival he runs, which would supercharge his power to unstoppable levels.
• A first-season episode of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers features Gnasty Gnome, whose evil accordion playing hypnotizes anyone who hears it. He uses it to ensnare some teenage girls at the Rec Center and lure them into a cave as his prisoners. Thankfully, a Deaf girl named Melissa is immune to the spell because she can't hear the music and serves as a Heroic Bystander by running to get help, allowing the Rangers to save the day.
• A story arc of NCIS involves the Big Bad using music to brainwash children into becoming Child Soldiers. One of them shoots Gibbs.
• The first episode of the short-lived Fox show The New Adventures of Beans Baxter had the villain using a singer's music to control the minds of teenagers.
• The Outer Limits (1995): Subverted in "Music of the Spheres". Teenagers hear a radio transmission from outer space as "perfect music" that puts them into a blissful trance, unable to stop listening. When the music starts changing their physiology, adults think it's an alien attack — but the ending reveals that the transformation was designed to protect Earthlings during an upcoming solar flare. The pleasurable sound was simply a way to keep the listeners happily engaged.
• War of the Worlds (1988): This is the Evil Plan in "Choir of Angels", though only one person is the specific target — a scientist working on the serum that will make the Martians immune to Earth's bacteria. Harrison inadvertently listens to the music and becomes affected, leading to a painful withdrawal.
• One episode of Wonder Woman (1975) features a flute-playing rock star who can control his female fans with his music.

Music

• The Lonely Island:
  • "Boombox." The eponymous box causes people to lose control when they hear music coming from it.
    A boombox can change the world
    But you've gotta know your limits with a boombox
    This was a cautionary tale
    A boombox is not a toy
  • The song in "Go Kindergarten" convinces the audience to do all sorts of weird things, including things that shouldn't even be possible, like making their butts drink helium and speak in a high-pitched voice.
• The music video for Fatboy Slim's "Ya Mama" shows people losing control of their limbs whenever they hear the tune. Hilarity Ensues.
• Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle takes place in a future that prohibits physical violence. In the absence of that, what do the violent turn to? Hypnosis Microphones, dangerous weapons that make their opponents compelled to do what they say as long as they sing or rap into them. That's right, weaponized rapping is the name of the game here.
• Peter Schilling's "Lifetime Guarantee" has this verse:
  Harmonious melodies that sound familiar,
  Specialized in mind control;
  From computers they offer
  Less obvious merchandise for the believers.

Myths & Religion

• The title character of The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Initially, it seems like he's limited to controlling rats, but when the town stiffs him on his bill, he reveals similar hypnotic power over children. (This is, of course, where the old saying "Time to pay the piper" originated, meaning that going back on a deal can have consequences.)
• Classical Mythology: Sirens. Listening to their song causes sailors to wish to dash their ships on the rocks just to get closer.
• There is a Swedish folktale about the village of Hårga where The Devil is disguised as a musician appears and plays a song on his fiddle that is so captivating that everyone just keeps on dancing to its tune. The dancing crowd is then led out by the fiddler to the top of Mount Hårga where they keep on dancing until everyone drops dead and the peak of the mountain is flattened.

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock: The trail leading up Wonder Mountain has the Singing Cactus, who like to perform their mind-controlling doo-wop song: "Do the Sashay." They sing it to ensnare anyone who gets too close to them into singing and dancing along for all eternity.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The singing and music of bards can charm other creatures.
  • Some magical musical instruments can do this even if played by someone other than a bard.
• Call of Cthulhu. The spell Soul Singing requires the caster to play a bone whistle. It allows the caster to control the target's mind, leading them in a trance-like state to their doom.
• Champions supplement C.L.O.W.N. has two of these.
  • One of Merry Andrew's gadgets is a crank organ that plays "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" tune. Anyone who hears it starts to act like a monkey.
  • Beuford the Bard has a magical mandolin that controls the minds of people who listen to its music.
• The Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG: The Enrapture spell typically works through eye contact, but spending a point of Essence allows the spell to be cast through song instead. This allows the spell to affect creatures who use senses other than vision, increases the spell's range, and (if the caster is actually good at singing) makes the effect harder to resist.

Theater

• Elisabeth: Some productions play Death's attempt at coaxing Sisi to kiss him in "Elisabeth, mach auf" as this. Both characters lean in close for a kiss, then Sisi breaks the spell at the very last moment and snap at Death to Get Out! because she's still too young to die. The Toho production goes a step further and gives Death this ability outright; in multiple scenes, Sisi and Rudolf resist the Compelling Voice, with varying levels of success.
• The Phantom of the Opera: The Phantom hypnotises Christine in the reprise of "Angel of Music" (also known as "Wandering Child"). Some actors choose to play "Music of the Night" as this, too.

Video Games

• In Far Cry 5 the herald of the Whitetail Mountains, Jacob Seed, has a music box that plays 'Only You' by The Platters, which puts you in a dreamscape, where you 'Cull the Herd/Weak'. The last time he catches you, you end up killing Eli Palmer, the leader of the Whitetail Militia.
• AdventureQuest Worlds has Discordia, the Sixth Lord of Chaos from the Mythsong saga, whose music has the power to control people. It turns out that he himself is being controlled by Kimberly of One Eyed Doll, the true Chaos Lord.
• Shiho of Valkyrie Profile, a 'songmistress' whose singing instills her countrymen with burning fury and bloodlust, turning them into unstoppable berserkers in combat. She's wrought with guilt, however, since her song doesn't make them invulnerable, just fearless, leading most of the soldiers to their death.
• Donkey Kong Country Returns: The Tikis use hypnotic music to make the animals of DK Isle steal the Kongs' banana hoard for them. However, when one of them tries it on Donkey Kong, he just sends his would-be hypnotist flying. Once he and Diddy set out to reclaim the hoard, the same music is used to make every boss the Kongs encounter (expect for Tiki Tong) attack them.
• In Metal Gear Solid, Psycho Mantis uses a distinctive 'hymn' based on Russian choral music to control people's minds, referred to by Naomi as "mind control music" and supposedly a favourite song of his childhood. It is first played in-game as apparently ordinary in-game music, but when it stops, Snake and Meryl both comment on it and get justifiably worried (when it begins again, it is Mantis attempting to possess Meryl). Spoofed in The Last Days of FOXHOUND where Mantis accidentally discovers he can do this by whistling.
• Before she escaped him, this is how Sebille's master controlled her in Divinity: Original Sin II, in combination with her Slave Brand. He would sing a song that would control her thoughts and make her do his bidding (specifically assassinating other elves). When she meets him again on The Nameless Isle, the first thing she does, after their rather tense "chat" in which he demonstrates his power over her, is stab him in the throat with her needle to keep him from singing.

• Splatoon: Inverted. The Calamari Inkantation can break those who hear it out of mind control.
• In Streets of Rage 4, Mr. X's children, Mr. and Ms. Y, plan to use mind-control music in their plot to Take Over the City.

Visual Novels

• In Chaos;Head, the band Phantasm - or perhaps just their enigmatic lead singer, FES - can reduce a whole roomful of rowdy concertgoers to hypnotized zombies with their strange, prophetic goth-punk-rock. Or maybe you just imagined it...

Webcomics

• In the Free Spirit (2014) comic "Song of the Siren", Winnie accidentally discovers that her singing can hypnotize mortals into performing such activities as giving her nice things or breaking into Spontaneous Choreography.

Web Original

• DSBT InsaniT: This is Stephanie's specialty, and it gets stronger the more people join in.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of the Gummi Bears episode "Music Hath Charms" had Duke Igthorn use a set of magical bagpipes to hypnotize anyone who heard its music (with the exception of the ogres}, especially the Gummis.
• One Pinky & the Brain short on Animaniacs titled "Bubba Bo-Bob Brain" featured Brain creating subliminal messages that would brainwash anyone who heard them. He drew inspiration from Pinky's latest obsession—a Billy Ray Cyrus parody called "Empty Empty Head"—to disguise himself as "Bubba Bo-Bob Brain," a six-foot-five country music star, and hid the messages in his song "King of the World" (like some other examples on this list, the lyrics also explicitly stated that "Bubba" was actually a lab rat trying to dominate the planet). Interestingly, this was among the most successful attempts Brain made—the hypnotized citizens listened to the song non-stop, and he was one performance away from permanent mental control...only for him to grow frustrated with Pinky's constant mangling of "Bubba Bo-Bob Brain" and shout "FORGET YOU EVER HEARD OF ME!" The populace promptly did just that.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force features a villain named MC Pee Pants who releases rap songs laced with subliminal messages in an attempt to rope people into his utterly insane schemes. For example, in his first appearance, he releases a song titled "I Want Candy" that causes anyone who hears it to crave sweets non-stop. It turns out that this is a ploy to raise people's blood sugar to insanely high levels, allowing MC Pee Pants to use it to power a drill and release demons from Hell, who would in turn run a global diet pill pyramid scheme. And all of this is expressly spelled out in the lyrics.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold has a Canon Foreigner named The Music Meister, whose singing hits a certain frequency to mind control anyone who hears it. Another effect: those who fall under his spell burst into song themselves. Batman is able to create a device that dampens its power, though.
• In the Centurions episode "Whalesong", Doc Terror hires frustrated composer Madame Arpeggio to create a phony whalesong that hypnotizes the peaceful creatures, then commands them to destroy all humans.
• In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Risky Beesness", Mad Scientist Irwina Allen controls a swarm of bees via (awful) rock music.
• As the page quote indicates, Danny Phantom features recurring villain Ember McLain, a ghostly punk rocker with the ability to control people's emotions via a spectral guitar; she also draws power from people chanting her name, and so brainwashed teenagers into a frenzy in her first appearance. In this case, Sam was the only person unaffected as she was wearing Fenton Phones (noise-cancelling, ghost-repelling earplugs) throughout the episode. Later, she used a more traditional method—backmasked messages in records—to hypnotize the adults of Amity Park into abandoning their children and powering a fleet of ships for Youngblood the Pirate, another ghost.
• In Detentionaire, there is a song called the Prank Song that puts most people into a highly suggestible state. Some people are naturally immune to the effects, though.
• Dexter's Laboratory: A one-shot villain named "Organ Grindor" used his titular instrument to hypnotize the heroic Monkey into becoming a thief for him.
• The Magical Mandolin from the Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz episode of the same name works this way. When played during the day, it causes people to dance merrily, but when played at night, it puts anyone who hears it in an obedient trance.
• In G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, terrorist leader Cobra Commander hires Zartan and the Dreadknocks (a group of mercenaries) to form a band called "Cold Slither" so that subliminal messages can be put into their recording.
• An episode of Garfield and Friends involves a Tyrannosaurus Rex who, after awakening from being sealed in a cave, attempts to take over the world by hosting a children's television program as "Sidney the Pink Dinosaur" and singing an insipid song titled "Good is Better Than Bad." Anyone who hears it (and looks into the dinosaur's Hypnotic Eyes) becomes a blithering moron who agrees with everything Sidney says. Garfield avoids the hypnosis (a combination of not looking at the screen and realizing how stupid the idea is) and ends up having to save the world...again.
• Used by Robbie in the Gravity Falls episode "Boyz Crazy".
• Used by Dr. Wily in Mega Man (Ruby-Spears).
• Happens a couple times in Phineas and Ferb.
  • This trope was also parodied in "Bubble Boys." The tone-deaf Dr. Doofenshmirtz invents a hat that makes him a great country singer, and plans to brainwash the tri-state area with his song "Yodel-Odel Obey Me." The parody comes into play when the song's lyrics explicitly state that the listeners are being hypnotized: "You'll be my obedient mindless slaves, and nobody will blame me..." Despite the blatant mentions of mind control, it still works:
    Country Music Fan One: I like him!
    Country Music Fan Two: YEAH! LET'S DO WHATEVER HE SAYS!
  • In "Mind Share", aliens take over the bodies of Phineas, Ferb, and the gang and they cause mayhem; the instant they hear the "hypnotic quadrilateral voice commands" of the Danville Square Dance, this hypnotizes the horde into being forced to do whatever is called out without fighting it. Candace uses this to trick the aliens into switching back with the kids.
• Mandarin Orange of Rainbow Rangers, who has Music Power, possesses a Hypno-Flute which can charm anyone or anything and allow them to obey her commands. However, it can only be used once per living thing.
• Samurai Jack has an episode called "Jack and the Rave", in which an evil DJ who works for Aku plays rave music that hypnotizes teenagers into becoming violent hoodlums.
• The Secret Show had this as the plot of one episode, where T.H.E.M. enters a music contest with the goal of hypnotizing the world through their music.
• The main premise of the episode "New Kids on the Blecch" of The Simpsons. Bart joins the boy band "The Party Posse", a project by the Navy to use subliminal messages in music to get more recruits. Their first song contains the lyrics "Yvan eht nioj" ("Join the Navy" backwards).
• Madame Trilby's magic flute (no relation to the other magic flute) that Gargamel used on the Smurfs to make them sleepwalk in The Smurfs episode "Sleepwalking Smurfs". Also the Ghoulliope from the cartoon special "Smurfily Ever After".
• In The Snorks episode "A Hard Day's Snork", the Snorks are eaten alive by a piperfish, whose hypnotic tune lures his victims into his belly, and the Snorks have to work together to give the fish a bellyache in order to free themselves, though in order to do so, they need Tooter to distract him.
• In the Sonic Boom episode "Battle of the Boy Bands", Justin Beaver's music can hypnotize females.
• The Sebastian Saga's MO from Totally Spies!. In "A Thing For Musicians", he tried to take over the world using a budding pop star's music. In "Stark Raving Mad", he used a rage-inducing song to make rave-goers destroy the spies' favorite hangouts, including Beverly Hills High School.
• The first episode of Mighty Orbots pits the heroes against a band using mind-controlling music.
  Dia: "SHADOW's using Rock and Roll. Is nothing sacred?"
• The Bravestarr episode that served as a Poorly Disguised Pilot for the never-produced Sherlock Holmes In the 23rd Century ^note Not to be confused with Creator/DIC's Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century involved Moriarty using a kidnapped alien child with hypnotic singing powers to try to take over the world with a rock concert.
• The Tom and Jerry short "Johann Mouse" isn't so much about mind-controlling music as it is about the title rodent (Jerry) simply moved to dance whenever he hears Strauss play his piano. Tom uses this to his advantage and quickly learns how to play the piano so he can lure Johann out to catch him, only they've both attracted an audience.

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