“Roots for the bad guys”: ‘Psycho Killer’ and the defining Talking Heads song
In the icy, drab December of 1977, Talking Heads released ‘Psycho Killer’, a track that would go on to define an era. While David Byrne, the band’s enigmatic frontman, has maintained that the song was not inspired by any specific crimes, its release date eerily coincided with the aftermath of the infamous ‘Son of Sam’ murders which had gripped New York City just months earlier.
‘Psycho Killer’ was never intended to be a manifesto on serial killers, yet its timing and the depth of its character study make it a near-perfect mirror of the cultural anxieties of the 1970s. With its chilling bassline, unpredictable lyrics, and uncanny refrain, the track tapped into an era’s pervasive dread. As Byrne’s vocals slip between English and French, his vocal style is part taunt, part confession, delivering lines like “I can’t seem to face up to the facts” with an unsettling detachment. The chorus’ iconic “Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?” has a hypnotic, almost incantatory quality.
According to the original lyric sheets copied onto the 2006 remaster of Talking Heads: 77, the song started as a semi-narrative of a killer committing murders. Here, Byrne adopts the persona of a killer instead of condemning it, unveiling the horrific inner monologue of a real-life monster.
In the notes of Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads, Byrne explains his ghoulish, ‘shock rock’ vision for the song: “When I started writing this (I got help later), I imagined Alice Cooper doing a Randy Newman-type ballad. Both the Joker and Hannibal Lecter were much more fascinating than the good guys. Everybody sort of roots for the bad guys in movies.”
This was a time when violent crime in America felt omnipresent, seemingly lurking around every corner. Police presence felt lacklustre, causing serial killers and criminals to run riot in the streets like masked cartoon villains. Names like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Ed Kemper, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Zodiac Killer and ‘Son of Sam’ killer David Berkowitz are all etched into the fabric of the country’s history after years of causing fear and bloodshed.
Poverty, psychedelic drugs, excessive violence on TV and an emergence of cult-like thinking were said to be to blame for such atrocities, but also the rise of urbanisation. Many houses were placed in extremely close proximity to one another, making it easier for crimes of opportunity to take place, sometimes in the dead of night. Families would often lie awake in leafy suburbs after reading reports of a killer on the loose, armed and ready in the fear that they might be next.
Although the 1983 single ‘Burning Down the House’ catapulted the band to commercial success, ‘Psycho Killer’ remains the only song from their discography included in The Rock and Roll Hall of ‘Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock’, despite never reaching the top ten on the charts. More recently, the track gained renewed attention with a prominent feature in the soundtrack of the hit 2017 Netflix series Mindhunter, directed by David Fincher.
It appears that we are in equal parts both repelled and fascinated by the idea of a ‘psycho’ or ‘serial killer’, all of which can be put down to basic, morbid human curiosity, or is it something more primal? Almost five decades later, ‘Psycho Killer‘ remains more shocking and relevant than ever, and one of Talking Heads’ most signature hits.
