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SALT LAKE CITY -- A talented young artist, with Utah ties, wrote a song that's just ghoulish enough for Halloween, and the video is starting to go viral.
It's called "The Zombie Song," and if you haven't heard the catchy tune yet, tonight's the perfect night.
"It's a weird subject matter," admits the singer and songwriter, Stephanie Mabey.
After all, Zombies are mythical corpses brought to life by some strange event of witchcraft. Odd topic for a song? Not if you're Stephanie Mabey. She likes to have fun with her craft, and wants to take it to the next level.
In the last five days, her "Zombie Song" video logged more than 7,000 hits on YouTube. She performed the song on KSL Newsradio's "The Browser" this afternoon. She's a cool and comfortable performer, but the attention for the song caught her by surprise.
"I hoped it would get some attention," she says. "I didn't expect that people would get so excited about it. People have been pretty passionate about this song, which is cool."
Her 14-year-old cousin drew the animation for the song, which was inspired by the cult classic handbook: "The Zombie Survival Guide." After flipping through the book, Mabey challenged herself to write a Zombie love song.
If I were a Zombie,
I'd never eat your brain.
I'd just want your heart,
I'd just want your heart,
I just want your heart.
"It was definitely a creative challenge," the songwriter says. "When I was flipping through that book, I thought, 'This could be a really funny love song.' That kind of was my thinking in getting it going."
The Denver songwriter lived in Highland when she was younger and is recording her third album in Provo. And there's a lot more to her music than Zombies in that upcoming album titled "Wake up Dreaming."
"A lot of the characters in the different songs are a little more whimsical and imaginative," she says.
The young artist says she's in the process of building an audience online, which isn't a bad route these day for independent artists. She jokingly refers to her efforts at growing her audience as "sending Bat signals to find her people."
"For me, it's just about connection with people, even just on an individual basis: finding people in a very grassroots kind of way," she says.
She's excited about that new album which comes out in January. But, today she's happy with the buzz "The Zombie Song" has created.
"The fact that it might make people feel uncomfortable initially, creates a bigger pay-off in the end, when they find themselves thinking it's funny."
You can download the "Zombie Song" free from her website.
Email: [jboal@ksl.com](<mailto: jboal@ksl.com>)
