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About

Genius Annotation

One of the best-known Talking Heads songs, “Psycho Killer” was the second single from the 1977 album Talking Heads: 77, peaking at #92 on the Billboard Hot 100.

It is the first song performed in the 1984 concert album and film Stop Making Sense and appears on every Talking Heads “best of” and singles compilation.

The song is about the thoughts of a serial killer, inspired by the character Norman Bates in the movie Psycho. David Byrne came up with the idea of changing language to represent the “psycho killer” changing personalities, and bassist Tina Weymouth supplied the French lyrics.

According to bassist Tina Weymouth in the 2015 BBC 4 documentary Girl in a Band, this song was inspired by Byrne listening to Alice Cooper and wanting to make his own “really rude” song. In the liner notes of Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads, 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.

In Paul Zollo’s book Songwriters on Songwriting, it is said that “Psycho Killer” was the first song Frantz, Weymouth, and Byrne composed together, and that it was written “entirely as a joke. To this day Byrne wonders why people love it.” (p. 495)

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Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

Credits
Engineer
Background Vocals
Recorded At
Sundragon Studios, Flatiron District, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Release Date
September 16, 1977
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