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Psycho Killer
"Psycho Killer" is a song by American rock band Talking Heads, released on their debut studio album Talking Heads: 77 (1977).
The band's "signature debut hit" features lyrics that seem to represent the thoughts of a serial killer. Originally written and performed as a ballad, "Psycho Killer" became what AllMusic calls a "deceptively funky new wave/no wave song" with "an insistent rhythm, and one of the most memorable, driving basslines in rock & roll."
"Psycho Killer" was the only song from the album to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 92. It reached number 32 on the Triple J Hottest 100 in 1989, and peaked at number 11 on the Dutch singles chart in 1977. The song is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
"Psycho Killer" was first performed by the Artistics, the band formed by David Byrne and Chris Frantz while they were studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, in 1974. An early version of the song by the Artistics appeared on a three-song demo tape recorded in Providence, Rhode Island, in the spring of 1974. The demo tape was rediscovered in the archives of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in 2025. The version of "Psycho Killer" from the demo tape was selected for inclusion on the Talking Heads compilation Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live, released in late November 2025.
Prototype versions of "Psycho Killer" were performed onstage by Talking Heads as early as December 1975.
When it was finally completed and released as a single in December 1977, "Psycho Killer" became instantly associated in popular culture with the contemporaneous Son of Sam serial killings (July 1976 – July 1977). Although the band always insisted that the song had no inspiration from the notorious events, the single's release date was "eerily timely" and marked by a "macabre synchronicity".
According to the preliminary lyric sheets copied onto the 2006 remaster of Talking Heads: 77, the song started off as a semi-narrative of the killer actually committing murders. In the liner notes of Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads, David Byrne says:
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.
Psycho Killer
"Psycho Killer" is a song by American rock band Talking Heads, released on their debut studio album Talking Heads: 77 (1977).
The band's "signature debut hit" features lyrics that seem to represent the thoughts of a serial killer. Originally written and performed as a ballad, "Psycho Killer" became what AllMusic calls a "deceptively funky new wave/no wave song" with "an insistent rhythm, and one of the most memorable, driving basslines in rock & roll."
"Psycho Killer" was the only song from the album to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 92. It reached number 32 on the Triple J Hottest 100 in 1989, and peaked at number 11 on the Dutch singles chart in 1977. The song is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
"Psycho Killer" was first performed by the Artistics, the band formed by David Byrne and Chris Frantz while they were studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, in 1974. An early version of the song by the Artistics appeared on a three-song demo tape recorded in Providence, Rhode Island, in the spring of 1974. The demo tape was rediscovered in the archives of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum in 2025. The version of "Psycho Killer" from the demo tape was selected for inclusion on the Talking Heads compilation Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live, released in late November 2025.
Prototype versions of "Psycho Killer" were performed onstage by Talking Heads as early as December 1975.
When it was finally completed and released as a single in December 1977, "Psycho Killer" became instantly associated in popular culture with the contemporaneous Son of Sam serial killings (July 1976 – July 1977). Although the band always insisted that the song had no inspiration from the notorious events, the single's release date was "eerily timely" and marked by a "macabre synchronicity".
According to the preliminary lyric sheets copied onto the 2006 remaster of Talking Heads: 77, the song started off as a semi-narrative of the killer actually committing murders. In the liner notes of Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads, David Byrne says:
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.