“Psycho killer” remixed by the Cube Guys; the story of the song
“Psycho Killer (The Cube Guys Remix)” is available on all platforms from today“, an official remix for which the DJ duo obtained authorization from the New York band: they publish it the record label Just Entertainment by Sergio Cerruti.
The Cube Guys is the Italian duo formed by Roberto Intrallazzi and Luca Provera, protagonists of the house scene since 2005. With their distinctive sound and the #CUBED! format, they have made the most iconic clubs in the world dance, from Ibiza to Miami.
The two had already worked on the piece eight years ago, this is a new reworking. Here’s what the house/tech-house remix sounds like:
The story of the song
When “Psycho Killer” appeared in 1977 as the lead single from Talking Heads’ first album, “Talking Heads: 77,” it seemed to arrive from another planet. In the midst of the New York punk scene, where anger and noise reigned, here was a song built on a funky bass, a sharp guitar and the voice of David Byrne who, with a nervous and controlled tone, told the thoughts of a psychopathic murderer. It was disturbing and, at the same time, irresistibly danceable.
The story of the song, however, begins a few years earlier. Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth had known each other since their days at the Rhode Island School of Design. Before forming Talking Heads, they played together in a small band called The Artistics, and it was around that time — around 1974 — that the first version of “Psycho Killer” was born. Byrne had the idea of writing a “Randy Newman-style” ballad, but sung by an Alice Cooper-like character: a sort of parody of the rock villain, with a cold and detached irony.
The song grew over the years with the band. By the time Talking Heads settled in New York and began performing at CBGB, “Psycho Killer” was already one of their live hits. Byrne’s interpretation – rigid, anxious, with that blank stare – amplified the character of the text: an unstable, tormented man, unable to manage his internal tension (“I can’t seem to face up to the facts / I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax”). It wasn’t so much a criminal confession as a psychological, almost theatrical study of what goes on in the mind of someone who loses control.
One of the best-known peculiarities of the song is the chorus in French, written with the help of Tina Weymouth, who had French-Canadian origins. In that passage — “Ce que j’ai fait, ce soir-là / Ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir-là…” — the killer seems to slip into another language as if losing touch with reality, adding a surreal touch that became part of the piece’s charm.
Musically, “Psycho Killer” stands out for Weymouth’s simple yet haunting hypnotic bass line and Frantz’s dry, nervous rhythm. Byrne built on that base a melody that alternates between calm and panic, just like the mental state of the character singing. The result is a perfect hybrid between funk and art rock, a formula that Talking Heads would then explore with greater awareness on subsequent albums, up until “Remain in Light”.
When the song was released in 1977, some thought it was inspired by the crimes of the “Son of Sam”, the serial killer who terrorized New York in that period. Byrne, however, always denied any direct connection: the song had been written years earlier, and if anything expressed a more universal anxiety – that of the modern, alienated man who loses his sense of self in a world overloaded with stimuli.
Although it was not a great commercial success (it only reached number 92 on the Billboard Hot 100), “Psycho Killer” immediately became Talking Heads’ signature song and a manifesto of their aesthetic: intellectual but dancing, ironic and restless at the same time. Even today, that song retains a strange strength — a mix of paranoia and groove that no one at the time had ever dared to combine like that.
At the beginning of June a post was shared on the official Instagram profile of Talking Heads which gave an appointment for Thursday 5 June. The warning had immediately sparked the imagination of fanswhich they had immediately started to dream of seeing David Byrne and co together on tour again. The surprise was another: for the first time, “Psycho Killer” is accompanied by a video clips. The Talking Heads have in fact published the first official video of their classic, on the occasion of Exactly 50th anniversary of the band’s debut at CBGB, which occurred on June 5, 1975.
The new video, directed by director Mike Mills, stars the Oscar-winning actress Saoirse Ronan in the role of an “everywoman”, an ordinary woman who begins to lose control while trapped in a monotonous life as an office worker.
The release of the video coincided exactly with the 50th anniversary of the band’s first live concert, held on 5 June 1975, when they opened for the Ramones at CBGB in New York. In the video, Ronan plays a woman trapped in a cyclical routine: her mood changes radically, going from detached to serene to angry. She has an emotional breakdown at work, dances in her kitchen, and lies awake at night in existential angst while the people around her seem to notice nothing.
In a note shared on social media, the Talking Heads praised the unconventional direction of the video:
“This video makes the song even better: We love what this video is not: it is not literal, disturbing, bloody, physically violent or obvious,” they said.
David Byrnebusy promoting his new solo album live in the United States, “Who Is The Sky?” (read the review here), performed on October 22nd at the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The 73-year-old American musician gave those present a couple of surprises by performing in concert for the first time “Hard times”cover of a song by Paramore of 2017, but above all, for the first time in nineteen years, the classic dei Talking Heads, “Psycho killer”.
