‘Psycho Killer’: the birth of “real” shock rock
Towards the end of the 1970s, New York City was home to the ‘Son of Sam’ killer. Motivated by misogyny, David Berkowitz killed six people and wounded 11 between the summers of 1976 and 1977, leaving terror-inducing letters at his crime scenes or penning them directly to police and journalists. As those writings became available to the public, splashed on front pages or published in hopes of securing an admission of guilt, the city was plunged into darkness and dread.
Those feelings only lifted when Berkowitz was finally arrested in August 1977, putting an end to the killings and to the terrifying press coverage that accompanied them. Four months or so later, a band from Rhode Island put out a tune from the perspective of a ‘Psycho Killer’. It wasn’t about Berkowitz—in fact, it had been written years before—but it did match up to the darkness and depravity that haunted New York in 1977.
The tune featured a memorable bass line from Tina Weymouth and detached vocals from David Byrne, who took on the voice of a serial killer. “We are vain, and we are blind,” he sings, “I hate people when they’re not polite, psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?” It was a shocking choice of subject matter to put in an art pop song, particularly at the time of release, but it worked.
‘Psycho Killer’ sat firmly in the burgeoning post-punk and new wave scene that Talking Heads were leading figures of, but it took inspiration from the rockers that had preceded them, namely, and perhaps unexpectedly, Alice Cooper. It wasn’t an ode to the shock-rocker, though, but rather a reaction against his “mock-ghoulish” persona.
“Alice had all these safety gauges worked out so that it wouldn’t connect with anything remotely dangerous,” Byrne told the Financial Times last year, “I just liked the idea of writing a song that was more real.” Rather than relying on the characteristics of shock rock to stun audiences, on crazy makeup and outrageous live performances, Byrne preferred to shock listeners with something real, with the tale of a serial killer.
The track did present it in a shocking way. Byrne didn’t opt to describe or condemn the actions of the serial killer in the song but instead adopted them as a persona, filling the piece with the thoughts of its title character. Placed in direct contrast with the bouncy, new wave instrumentation, the song is all the more shocking. It’s groovy and danceable at first but much darker once you delve into Byrne’s words.
It was far more effective than shock rock because it borrowed from real life—it truly represented the darkness of the world at the time rather than manufacturing it on stage with over-the-top visuals. Byrne didn’t need excessive costuming or horror-style effects to leave audiences with their mouths gaping open; rather, he did it with a pen, a few lines in French, and his voice.
Almost 50 years later, ‘Psycho Killer’ remains more shocking and more effective than most, if not all, of shock rock. It was a song that was entirely committed to its dark subject matter, to delving into the mind of a serial killer. It wasn’t just shocking on the surface. It was shocking to the core. The track still remains one of Talking Heads’ signature tunes.
