Believe it or not, I’d never seen Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas until this past weekend. Now that I have, I realize I’ve been missing out for years on what is, in my mind, a musical masterpiece by one of the greatest artists of our age, Danny Elfman.

Oddly enough, despite having been a fan of Oingo Boingo ever since a friend gave me the cassette version of Dead Man’s Party, I didn’t recognize Elfman’s voice. Instead, I sat transfixed by the stop motion animation and the dark, twisted images born from Tim Burton’s brain.

Why haven’t I seen this before?!

I bobbed my head along to the chant rhythm of “This is Halloween” but didn’t truly sit up and pay attention to the movie until Jack began singing “What’s This?”

Now, I’ve long enjoyed musicals. Ever since catching my very first one — with Hope, Crosby and the Andrews Sisters — I’ve been a fan of the genre, never once bothered by the way that perfect strangers can, within seconds of meeting each other, sing a flawless duet backed by an entire city block full of people harmonizing (and often dancing) along.

But I had never heard a musical in which a character’s singing was actually as good as, if not better than, the voice acting. Until Nightmare. I watched it the entire way through, then immediately rewound the movie and watched it again.

Oh, the story line was a bit too dark and twisted for my son, who is now worried that Santa will get kidnapped and thus Christmas will be canceled, but I now have a new holiday favorite.

It was midway through my third viewing of Nightmare that I started thinking about the first time I’d heard of Elfman’s former band, Oingo Boingo. I seemed to remember that my older sister had just sat me down to listen to an album she’d bought by some woman named Tina Turner — a purchase which my mother would’ve had a fit if she’d known since she considered Tina’s dancing and leg-baring to be far too risqué for us kids.

A few minutes searching confirmed that I somehow haven’t completely blocked out all memories of my childhood. Because I was right: I’d seen Oingo Boingo once before… on the Gong Show.

Sure, they were “weird” by 1978’s standards, and yet nearly three decades later they sound utterly modern.

Now that is genius.

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