Mister David Byrne has said before that this song is about Norman Bates from Psycho, but I don’t see any connection to his mindset at all in these lyrics, and instead I had a very different and personal reading that I haven’t seen anyone get into before. To me, my family, and my friends, this song is one thing: An autistic meltdown caused by sensory overload as told from the point of view of the person experiencing it.
Let me explain myself, because some people with misconceptions about autism are going to assume I’m comparing being autistic to being a “psycho killer.” First of all, nothing wrong with being psychotic, the killer part is the problem, second of all David Byrne identified as autistic from a young age up until he was rich and famous enough to control every aspect of his environment so the more “negative symptoms” wouldn’t surface—his autism informs a lot of his songwriting, and third of all I am actually autistic and I promise I’m going somewhere with this.
It starts almost immediately in the first verse.
“I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax / I can’t sleep ‘cause my bed’s on fire / Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire”
This immediately rings true to me as a sign of sensory overload. Unable to relax, writhing in a bed that feels too hot and too cold and too hard and too soft, needing everyone to keep their distance. The way he says “don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire” speaks to me on a deeply personal level.
The second verse is the most obvious to me.
“You start a conversation, you can't even finish it / You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything / When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed / Say something once, why say it again?”
He’s stuck in a room with (presumably neurotypical) people making small talk. To some autistic people, even with very low support needs, small talk is agonising. It’s empty words that don’t communicate anything repeated over and over ad nauseam. You’re expected to have a specific answer to certain prompts, and if you engage too earnestly or don’t engage at all you’re seen as weird. Sitting in a room where this is happening is slowly overwhelming him and making him feel like he’s going to lose his mind, which is where the chorus comes in.
“Psycho Killer / Qu'est-ce que c'est / Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa / Better run run run, run run run run away” (as well as all vocalisations that accompany these lyrics)
When you are autistic, high masking (means good at suppressing your autism enough to appear neurotypical to an outside observer [this is not a good trait to have in many cases]), and having a moment of sensory overload you begin to silently panic. I’m not exaggerating. You go into fight, flight, freeze, and fawn simultaneously. Your thoughts become jumbled and frenzied and oftentimes downright mean in a way that does not align with your true personality.
I’ve asked my autistic friends and even my mother who probably has undiagnosed autism if this rang true to them, and they all agreed with me on this point:
When you are being overwhelmed by a specific thing, person, or group, you start thinking evil thoughts about it to express your distress. It’s not uncommon to think “If you don’t shut up/stop it/turn that off right now I’m going to finally snap and kill someone, I’m going to end it all, I will literally crazy murder you,” & then the actual thing that happens is you say “Hey, can you please stop chewing for a second so I can put my earplugs in? I’m really noise sensitive right now.” And then everything is fine.
“Qu'est-ce que c'est” could have a number of interpretations, my favourites are that the brain gets very jumbled in this situation, so he might be switching to French on accident—my mother does this sometimes, and she hasn’t spoken French since the 90s. Alternatively, taking the meaning of “basically ‘what is this’ or ‘what’s that’” (gonna have to trust my mother on that translation) it could be some kind of confusion about what’s even happening to him and why.
“Run run run run away” can easily be read as him warning others to run before he snaps on them, but it also makes me think of the urge to just get up and run out of a room that’s overwhelming me. That’s the “flight” response in action!
The vocalisations are amazing in this chorus, I can’t sing it without doing my main overload stim which is to shake out a hand in front of my chest. The “fa-fa-fa” part sounds like hyperventilating, the “oh, ayayayayay” part sounds like yelling to try and disperse some of the panicked energy, and finally the “ooh, hoo, hoo, hoo, hooo…” sounds like trying to full yourself together afterward.
The French in the bridge is the closest to being Norman Bates related in the entire song but I don’t think he’s thrusting himself to glory in that movie even in his own mind. That said, I don’t have an autistic reading of it unless French is a comfort language for him in which case muttering to himself in French could actually be a form of stimming. I do it with singing in Japanese because the consonants are so delightfully placed that it feels amazing in my mouth.
“We are vain and we are blind / I hate problem when they’re not polite” is probably the most straightforward thing possible. Humans are flawed, we make rules just to break them, and we’re unkind.
So that is my reading of the song and why it’s my personal autism anthem!
Mister David Byrne has said before that this song is about Norman Bates from Psycho, but I don’t see any connection to his mindset at all in these lyrics, and instead I had a very different and personal reading that I haven’t seen anyone get into before. To me, my family, and my friends, this song is one thing: An autistic meltdown caused by sensory overload as told from the point of view of the person experiencing it.
Let me explain myself, because some people with misconceptions about autism are going to assume I’m comparing being autistic to being a “psycho killer.” First of all, nothing wrong with being psychotic, the killer part is the problem, second of all David Byrne identified as autistic from a young age up until he was rich and famous enough to control every aspect of his environment so the more “negative symptoms” wouldn’t surface—his autism informs a lot of his songwriting, and third of all I am actually autistic and I promise I’m going somewhere with this.
It starts almost immediately in the first verse.
“I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax / I can’t sleep ‘cause my bed’s on fire / Don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire”
This immediately rings true to me as a sign of sensory overload. Unable to relax, writhing in a bed that feels too hot and too cold and too hard and too soft, needing everyone to keep their distance. The way he says “don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire” speaks to me on a deeply personal level.
The second verse is the most obvious to me.
“You start a conversation, you can't even finish it / You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything / When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed / Say something once, why say it again?”
He’s stuck in a room with (presumably neurotypical) people making small talk. To some autistic people, even with very low support needs, small talk is agonising. It’s empty words that don’t communicate anything repeated over and over ad nauseam. You’re expected to have a specific answer to certain prompts, and if you engage too earnestly or don’t engage at all you’re seen as weird. Sitting in a room where this is happening is slowly overwhelming him and making him feel like he’s going to lose his mind, which is where the chorus comes in.
“Psycho Killer / Qu'est-ce que c'est / Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa / Better run run run, run run run run away” (as well as all vocalisations that accompany these lyrics)
When you are autistic, high masking (means good at suppressing your autism enough to appear neurotypical to an outside observer [this is not a good trait to have in many cases]), and having a moment of sensory overload you begin to silently panic. I’m not exaggerating. You go into fight, flight, freeze, and fawn simultaneously. Your thoughts become jumbled and frenzied and oftentimes downright mean in a way that does not align with your true personality.
I’ve asked my autistic friends and even my mother who probably has undiagnosed autism if this rang true to them, and they all agreed with me on this point:
When you are being overwhelmed by a specific thing, person, or group, you start thinking evil thoughts about it to express your distress. It’s not uncommon to think “If you don’t shut up/stop it/turn that off right now I’m going to finally snap and kill someone, I’m going to end it all, I will literally crazy murder you,” & then the actual thing that happens is you say “Hey, can you please stop chewing for a second so I can put my earplugs in? I’m really noise sensitive right now.” And then everything is fine.
“Qu'est-ce que c'est” could have a number of interpretations, my favourites are that the brain gets very jumbled in this situation, so he might be switching to French on accident—my mother does this sometimes, and she hasn’t spoken French since the 90s. Alternatively, taking the meaning of “basically ‘what is this’ or ‘what’s that’” (gonna have to trust my mother on that translation) it could be some kind of confusion about what’s even happening to him and why.
“Run run run run away” can easily be read as him warning others to run before he snaps on them, but it also makes me think of the urge to just get up and run out of a room that’s overwhelming me. That’s the “flight” response in action!
The vocalisations are amazing in this chorus, I can’t sing it without doing my main overload stim which is to shake out a hand in front of my chest. The “fa-fa-fa” part sounds like hyperventilating, the “oh, ayayayayay” part sounds like yelling to try and disperse some of the panicked energy, and finally the “ooh, hoo, hoo, hoo, hooo…” sounds like trying to full yourself together afterward.
The French in the bridge is the closest to being Norman Bates related in the entire song but I don’t think he’s thrusting himself to glory in that movie even in his own mind. That said, I don’t have an autistic reading of it unless French is a comfort language for him in which case muttering to himself in French could actually be a form of stimming. I do it with singing in Japanese because the consonants are so delightfully placed that it feels amazing in my mouth.
“We are vain and we are blind / I hate problem when they’re not polite” is probably the most straightforward thing possible. Humans are flawed, we make rules just to break them, and we’re unkind.
So that is my reading of the song and why it’s my personal autism anthem!