Psycho Killer
by Talking Heads
- 123
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 73
- Danceability
- 8
- Acousticness
In December 1977, when "Psycho Killer" came out as a single, people linked it to the Son of Sam killings of July 1976 to July 1977. Talking Heads always insisted the song had nothing to do with them. The release date was still eerily timely. It was the only song from Talking Heads: 77 to reach the Billboard Hot 100, at number 92, and it hit number 11 in the Netherlands in 1977.
David Byrne and Chris Frantz first played it in the Artistics, their band at the Rhode Island School of Design, in 1974. A demo tape from that spring was rediscovered at the school's museum in 2025 and put on a compilation in November 2025. Talking Heads were playing prototype versions on stage by December 1975.
Byrne said he had imagined Alice Cooper doing a Randy Newman-style ballad. Early lyric sheets showed the killer actually committing murders. Tina Weymouth supplied the French bridge. Her mother was French, and she did it in a little over an hour. Chris Frantz added a couple more verses, and the song was more or less done within a few hours. The official video, with Saoirse Ronan, directed by Mike Mills, was released on June 5, 2025.
Psycho Killer runs at 123 BPM, the tempo of house, disco and most club dance music. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.95 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 488 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.