“It’s Preying On My Mind” is the sound of a bright life going quiet inside—where the loudest thing left is thought, circling like a storm that won’t move on.
If you put the facts on the table first, you can hear the emotional intent more clearly. David Cassidy recorded “It’s Preying On My Mind” (often printed as “Preyin’ on My Mind”) for his third Bell Records solo album, Dreams Are Nuthin’ More Than Wishes—released in October 1973 and produced by Rick Jarrard. The song is credited to a fascinating trio: David Cassidy, Kim Carnes, and Dave Ellingson. And while the track itself wasn’t the era’s headline single, the album that carried it made a very loud statement in Britain: it debuted at No. 18 on the UK’s Official Albums Chart dated 24/11/1973, and—after a swift climb—reached No. 1, spending 13 weeks on the chart in total.
That debut position matters, because it tells you what the public felt in real time: Cassidy’s name still pulled people into shops, still moved sleeves off racks. Yet “It’s Preying On My Mind” is the kind of track that doesn’t sound like it’s chasing that momentum. It sounds like it’s questioning it.
In chart terms, the song’s own story is almost deliberately modest. There isn’t a clean, widely documented UK or U.S. singles “debut” to cite for “It’s Preying On My Mind” because it wasn’t pushed as the big radio-facing single in those markets. In Germany, the official chart database lists it as a 1973 single and gives full credits (writers and producer), but notably does not display a chart entry or peak for the track—suggesting that, even if a single release existed, it did not leave a trace on the main German singles chart record there.
And then—like certain feelings that only become obvious after you’ve lived with them—the song found a second life in performance. On Cassidy Live! (recorded on his 1974 world tour), “It’s Preying On My Mind” is placed right at the front of the set list, opening the album with a longer, more urgent live reading. That choice is revealing: if you’re trying to win a room that’s already screaming your name, you open with something that holds the crowd, something that proves you’re more than the image. Cassidy opened with a confession.
The “behind-the-song” detail that gives the track its human temperature is Kim Carnes. Long before she became a household name herself, she was in Cassidy’s orbit—and a well-researched retrospective notes that Cassidy wrote “It’s Preying on My Mind” (and “Can’t Go Home Again”) with Carnes, who had accompanied him in concert. That isn’t just trivia. It frames the song as a moment of artistic adulthood: Cassidy moving away from being “given” material and toward shaping it, writing it, owning its interior logic. The album packaging even underlined that intimacy: Dreams Are Nuthin’ More Than Wishes is noted for its fold-out cover and handwritten notes by Cassidy explaining why he chose each song. This wasn’t a man hiding behind a hit factory. This was a man trying—quite openly—to be heard as a person.
So what does “It’s Preying On My Mind” mean?
Even the title is a small psychological masterpiece. “Preying” doesn’t mean merely “thinking about.” It means being hunted. It suggests the mind is not a peaceful room; it’s a place where something sharp has teeth, where worry keeps returning to the same spot until it breaks the skin. The song’s core feeling is rumination—the kind that turns time into a burden rather than a gift, where hours don’t open doors; they simply stack up in your hands. (One commentator, remembering the line about having “nothing left… but time,” captures exactly that bleak, aching mood.)
In Cassidy’s delivery—especially if you compare the studio cut to the live version—there’s a tension between polish and panic. The studio recording sits inside that 1973 pop architecture: controlled phrasing, clean arrangement, a sadness kept dignified. But the live performance (placed first on Cassidy Live!) leans into urgency, as if the thought isn’t merely “on his mind,” but actively moving him around. It becomes less a song you sing and more a storm you endure in front of witnesses.
And that is why this track belongs to Cassidy’s deeper legacy. In the public imagination he’s often frozen in the high-gloss early ’70s—youthful, adored, impossibly visible. But “It’s Preying On My Mind” quietly argues that visibility is not the same thing as peace. If anything, it suggests the opposite: that being watched can make you lonelier, because your private self becomes the only place you can be real—and that private self can be merciless.
What lingers, long after the charts and the posters have faded at the edges, is the song’s simple, hard-earned truth: sometimes the loudest battle is the one nobody else can hear. And when David Cassidy sings “It’s Preying On My Mind,” he isn’t asking to be remembered as an idol. He’s asking—more softly, more bravely—to be remembered as a man with a mind that wouldn’t always let him rest.