Psycho Killer

Read my entire Talking Heads series here.

I connect more to Talking Heads’ Afrobeat and funk-inspired material than to their more “song-y” material, but, I mean, this is the archetypal Talking Heads tune, so I can’t not write about it.

“Psycho Killer” is part of a particular family of Talking Heads songs that also includes “And She Was”, “Cities” and “Don’t Worry About The Government“: a collage of simple musical ideas that do not have any obvious relationship to each other. This makes the songs feel comfortingly familiar within each section while also feeling jarringly weird every time they move from one section to another.

That chorus is a problem. It’s catchy, but also off-putting. It’s fun to sing, but it’s not something I would want to sing for other people. The French phrase “qu’est-ce que c’est” means “what is it”, and I assume David Byrne put it in there more for its sound than for its meaning. According to Songfacts, the “fa-fa-fa” part was inspired by Otis Redding’s “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).” The French part in the bridge, written by Tina Weymouth, translates to “What I did that night, what she said that night, achieving my dreams, I’m going for it, towards the glory.”

Here’s an alternative arrangement with goth cello by Arthur Russell.

Here’s a live version from The Old Grey Whistle test in 1978, with the band looking like they’re about twelve years old.

Next, enjoy Adrian Belew’s guitar shredding on this live version from 1980.

Stop Making Sense begins with the iconic sight of David Byrne alone onstage singing “Psycho Killer” accompanied just by an acoustic guitar and a boombox (actually an offstage Roland TR-808 drum machine.)

This performance was flawlessly parodied in an episode of Documentary Now!, and the whole thing is worth a watch if you are a Talking Heads fan.

This 1998 performance of the tune by David Byrne in a Visible Man suit is possibly the most terrifying thing I have ever seen.

To keep that image out of your nightmares, I recommend chasing it with this delightful mashup of fifty songs from 1977.

You don’t hear too many classical arrangements of Talking Heads songs, but Eric Lyon did compose “Variations on Psycho Killer” for violinist Pauline Kim Harris. It also seems to be referencing the score to the Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Selena Gomez’s song “Bad Liar” interpolates the “Psycho Killer” bassline.

Here’s my chart of the intro, first verse and chorus.

The rhythms are much simpler and more predictable than they are a tune like “Crosseyed And Painless.” The harmony has some intrigue to it, though. Is this song in A major or A minor? Online chord charts have it both ways. The intro section is totally ambiguous. Tina Weymouth’s bassline consists of A, G and E, which could imply A7 or Am7. David Byrne’s guitar enters with some twelfth fret harmonics, which you could hear as Em/A, or A9sus4 or Am11(no 3rd). Then he plays A and G power chords. At the end of the intro he alternates A5 with D#°7. It sounds like a skewed version of A7 and D7 from the blues, but it’s unsettled.

The first verse finally resolves the issue with clear A7 chords, implying A Mixolydian mode. But then the chorus is equally clearly in A natural minor and C major. Many rock songs have major/minor ambiguity due to blues influence. “Psycho Killer” is at an oblique angle to the blues, but the connection is there. I haven’t transcribed the bridge yet, but it’s in B natural minor. The transition into it is hilariously abrupt. I also appreciate the completely atonal guitar solo that David Byrne plays over the outtro.

Much has been made of the fact that “Psycho Killer” came out right when the Son of Sam killings were dominating the news. It’s a complete coincidence; the band had written the song four years earlier in art school. They were not overjoyed about having “Psycho Killer” tied to David Berkowitz in the public consciousness, but their label thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

Talking Heads released the song fourteen years before Bret Easton Ellis published American Psycho, but I can’t help imagining a nerdier version of Patrick Bateman as the song’s narrator. I am apparently not the only person to imagine this; there are tons of fan-made music videos using clips of the movie.

When I went to Amherst College back in the dawn of history, the most popular class was called Murder, taught by Austin Sarat. It dealt with murder’s legal, moral, philosophical and cultural aspects. We read Supreme Court decisions about the death penalty and The Executioner’s Song, we talked about The Silence of the Lambs, we looked at crime scene photos. It was pretty riveting! Professor Sarat’s basic thesis is that Americans are fascinated by murderers, not because we fear becoming their victims, but because we are secretly jealous of their existential freedom. Killers have been a perennial trope in American pop music, from Appalachian murder ballads through gangsta rap. But these songs are usually about people who kill each other for some specific reason; there aren’t many songs about random serial-killer violence. In fact, the only other example I can think of is when Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

“Psycho Killer” may have unusual subject matter for a song, but there’s nothing unusual about it in the broader context of American culture. In addition to Patrick Bateman, there’s the Hannibal Lecter cinematic universe, there’s Dexter, there’s Nicole Wallace on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and so on. The genre of the first-person shooter has enabled millions of gamers (myself included) the simulated experience of killing people on a whim. The fascination with “psycho killers” is weird, though, because there very few of them in real life. Murderers usually have a close relationship with their victim; woman are most likely to be killed by their husband or boyfriend. So why is Hannibal Lecter such a popular character? You don’t have to agree with Professor Sarat that we are secretly jealous of him, but otherwise it is very difficult to explain why he looms so large in Americans’ imaginative lives.