Godsmack's most popular song, "Voodoo" was written by lead singer Sully Erna and bass player Robbie Merrill. Sully was a member of the Wiccan religion, which influenced this song. It uses many percussion instruments used in tribal celebrations.
Sully used the opportunity to set the record straight about his religion. "The most common misconceptions about witchcraft is that too many people think that it's Satanic," he told MTV News. "And there's no demons or devils that exist in Wicca, so therefore, you can't worship something that doesn't exist. It's simply about the belief of the Earth, natural herbs, and healing remedies that come from the Earth. A lot of spiritual beliefs, karma, stuff like that. So it's pretty pure, in a religion. It's pretty harmless."
Sully Erna decided to write this song after watching the 1988 Wes Craven movie The Serpent and the Rainbow, a film involving voodoo and witchcraft. Many believe the tune is about drugs, specifically a heroin addiction, because of the line, "I feel the snakebite enter my veins." Erna said that line is a metaphor for the rush of spiritual energy during a Wiccan ritual, and not about drugs.
The music video was also inspired by The Serpent and the Rainbow, which finds an anthropologist (Bill Pullman) traveling to Haiti, where it's rumored that black-magic practitioners are turning people into zombies.
In the Dean Karr-directed clip, Godsmack perform in a cornfield while zombies emerge from a lake and wander the woods. Appearing in the video are Laurie Cabot, an American Witchcraft high priestess, and members of her coven performing a Wiccan ceremony.
"Voodoo" first appeared on Godsmack's 1997 debut album All Wound Up..., which they released independently. After they got a record deal, they re-recorded it for their 1998 self-titled album.
On both CDs, the song is the last track listed, but after it ends there's about two minutes of silence, then percussion instruments can be heard, the same kind used in "Voodoo." Under the constant drum beat, voices of the band members and their producers can then be heard talking about how they put the album together. Eventually, a crowd comes in chanting the chorus of "Voodoo." One of the voices chatting on this secret track is that of Katrina Chester of the band Luxx.
This hidden track voodoo was popular in the '90s. In the streaming era there's nowhere to hide these songs, so they just appear on the tracklists, complete with titles. This hidden track is called "Witch Hunt."
The version played on the radio is a little shorter than the album version. Most radio stations didn't start playing the song until early in 2000, after their previous single, "
Whatever," had run its course. The song cracked the Hot 100 at #102 in April 2000.
Some parents play classical music to their children in the womb, but Sully Erna played "Voodoo" for his daughter Skyler before she was born. It worked: she grew up to be a Godsmack fan.
The vocals-only intro to this song was used as the title-theme for the short-lived MTV series Fear.
Erna came up with the melody during the short drive to the band's rehearsal space. "It was the only song at the time I had written a cappella before we even had any music to it," he explained in a Pandora Stories feature. "I had this idea for a melody and I kind of had it worked out by the time I got it to rehearsal. I went and showed it to Tony [Rombola, guitarist] and I was like, 'I'm going to sing this and I need you to put some music under it.'"
"Voodoo" was used on the TV series Roswell in the 2000 episode "Tess, Lies and Videotape," and in the 2018 movie Destroyer.
