100 Greatest Songs of the 70’s #41 Talking Heads – Psycho Killer

Released: 1977

Amongst the artists who emerged from the squalor of the Lower East Side’s ultimate dive bar CBGB in and around 1976, four became prominent one way or another, but only the Ramones could be categorised as punk. The other three were something different; Patti Smith had begun as a poet and street performer before harnessing the movement’s energy with terrifying effect, whilst Television were oddball subverters of rock n’ roll par excellence and then last – but far from least – came Talking Heads.

Fronted by David Byrne, the quartet weren’t terrifying, subversive or punk, instead blending the aesthetics of pop with a minimalism and dry funk that meant they were unlikely to ever be consumed by it’s faddishness. Their debut album Talking Heads: 77 was revelatory at two levels, both for it’s affection for but also clever dissemblance of the previous two decades of the American mainstream’s values.

Considered amongst it’s peers, Psycho Killer was an outlier. Over the course of two years almost from the band’s inception it grew an identity in the way a thought evolves; originally conceived as a ballad, the final version had teeth, with a tension-filled bassline and an arid, short armed guitar riff. ‘You better run run run run, run run away’ Byrne sang as it’s chorus, but it was far easier to stop and admire a song which would ultimately spread the word on Talking Heads from New York to New Zealand.