Prompt: "A song featuring a trickery"
Selected by Brianna
"Psycho Killer"
Talking Heads
Talking Heads: 77, 1977
In one of their biggest hits, the Talking Heads take us into the mind of a psychopath. In interchanging French and English lyrics, we see this killer begin to crack under the pressure of their double life (or at least that's how I see it). To compare this life of deception to mere trickery is probably a little bit of a stretch, as "trickery" tends to evoke a more playful kind of deceit. But take the song's performance in Stop Making Sense (the top-tier live concert movie, of course). Is there not something kind of chaotic to the way Byrne stumbles around the stage, almost reminiscent of a toddler's first steps. And, just like our psycho stumbles through this cover, this illusion, they've made for and of themselves.
(To take this playful view of a potentially violent song even further, it's fun to imagine the lengths that this crazy man has gone to hide his true nature. Maybe this is where the French comes in! Like as he begins to succumb to this anxieties of being caught, he loses track of his identities and begins speaking the incorrect languages to fit in.)
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