The Killers Reflect on 'Mr. Brightside' 15 Years After Its Release
By Katrina Nattress
October 3, 2018
The Killers' iconic song "Mr. Brightside" recently turned 15 (how old does that make you feel?) and to celebrate, vocalist Brandon Flowers chatted with Rolling Stone about how the band's biggest song came to be.
"Who would have thought betrayal would sound so good?" he said with a laugh before revealing the song's inspiration came from the singer's first relationship ending when he was 19 or 20. He was living in a room he rented from his sister at the time, and wrote the lyrics on paper — something he hasn't done in a while. “I wasn’t writing on a cell phone yet. You don’t write with pen and paper anymore.”
Around the same time, Flowers met guitarist Dave Keuning, who had already wrote what would be the music to the song. With a robotic drum, they recorded a crude demo of the track. “I hadn’t written a second verse, so I just sang it again,” the singer explained of the song's repetitiveness. “I changed a couple of words and there’s a little bit of a different emphasis in the second verse, but that was just sort of procrastination. Sometimes it works out, I guess.”
While recording "Mr. Brightside," Flowers admitted to channeling his inner David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Oasis.
“There’s an anthemic quality in the pre-choruses, and we learned a lot about things like that from listening to Oasis,” he confessed. “You can really hear those influences seeping in on Hot Fuss and the way we set up the chorus on ‘Somebody Told Me’ or ‘Mr. Brightside.’ I think the anthemic quality is me trying to beat [Oasis’] ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ or ‘Where the Streets Have No Name.'”
After a small pause and laugh, Flowers continued: “It’s insane to think that’s what I was thinking about at the time, but that’s what I was thinking about.”
Listen to the "Mr. Brightside" demo below.
The Killers will be visiting L.A. on January 19, 2019 as part of iHeartRadio's ALTer Ego, along with twenty one pilots, Muse, Weezer, Rise Against, Bishop Briggs, and The Revivalists.
Photo: Getty Images