{"id":629218,"date":"2026-04-26T05:25:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/629218\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T05:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:25:11","slug":"how-talking-heads-captured-the-murderous-fear-of-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/629218\/","title":{"rendered":"How Talking Heads captured the murderous fear of 1977"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Talking<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 25 April 2026 23:00, UK <\/p>\n

In 1977, when Talking Heads<\/a> released \u2018Psycho Killer\u2019, things were dark \u2013 and they had been for a while.<\/p>\n

When we talk about the end of the 1960s, we talk about a cloud rolling in. After the era personified by hippie optimism, there was a sense that what went up had to come down. The down was violent though, brought about by things like the Manson Family murders, the deaths at Altamont festival or the loss of a long list of icons.<\/p>\n

At the start of the 1970s, the casualties kept coming. Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix both died, and Andy Warhol\u2019s superstar Edie Sedgwick died, marking the end of that party scene that had started decaying the moment the artist was shot in 1968. In New York, all the hubs were changing. Suddenly, the scene was gathered in grotty little new venues like the CBGB, and even the Chelsea Hotel was descending into chaos beyond its eclecticism. It was becoming too dingy, and people were moving out as the addicts moved in.<\/a><\/p>\n

It seemed that the crashing end of the \u201860s just kept on getting worse and worse, smashing to the ground and then burrowing underground into hell. That\u2019s around the time Son of Sam appeared.<\/p>\n

If things weren\u2019t already harsh enough on the mean streets of New York, in the summer of 1975, they gained an actual, real-life villain<\/a> \u2013 it felt like a horror movie as a string of murders started taking place, leading to the loss of six people, with 11 others wounded, between 1975 and 1977.<\/p>\n

New York was used to crime, but this was something else. It wasn\u2019t just violent, it was weird and sinister \u2013 targeting young women, he specifically looked for victims in pairs: he\u2019d attack two women together, or sometimes even attack a woman while her boyfriend sat next to her. That\u2019s the detail that freaked people out \u2013 everyone was scared, so they wanted to move in packs, but moving in packs was making them a more likely target.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also your classic horror stuff \u2013 the killer, who was eventually found out to be David Berkowitz, was sending creepy notes to the police, taunting them for their inability to catch him and signing each off with a weird logo and the name, \u2018Son of Sam\u2019. Later on, when he was finally caught, he claimed that all the murders took place while he was possessed by a demon, manifesting in the form of his neighbour\u2019s black dog, Sam.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if David Byrne sensed all this was coming<\/a>. A year prior, while the band were still in Rhode Island doing art degrees, Byrne started scribbling down lyrics for a song called \u2018Psycho Killer\u2019. At the time, the initial second verse felt even more prophetic, singing, \u201cskirt tight, don\u2019t like that style,\u201d specifying the villain\u2019s targets as women. Even as he sang \u201clisten to me, now I\u2019ve passed the test,\u201d it feels eerily connected to the real-life killer\u2019s claim that all of this death was to appease a devil.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He seemed tuned into the way culture was shifting. \u201cIt was inspired by Alice Cooper and Randy Newman, and I thought what if those two got together and wrote a song about her serial killer,\u201d Byrne said of the track, interested in these two polar opposite points of culture. In Alice Cooper, he seemed to see the moment\u2019s obsession with darkness, adding to the broader sense that things were getting creepy.<\/p>\n

In the end, \u2018Psycho Killer\u2019 would be released only a few months after Son of Sam was arrested. He\u2019s still alive, though, serving life in Shawangunk Correctional Facility, still in New York State. Giving the band their first hit, the neurotic violence of the song landed as an odd theme tune for the city in a state of panic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sat 25 April 2026 23:00, UK In 1977, when Talking Heads released \u2018Psycho…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341,20234],"class_list":{"0":"post-629218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-talking-heads"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}