You will forget the first time you heard The Killers’ biggest track. You will never forget the most recent time, though. It is the curse of a hit track surviving past its expiry date. Like Sweet Caroline and Come on Eileen it rounds out parties and pits one-hit wonders against one another. Except The Killers are not one-hit wonders. For a decade or more they crafted hit after hit at an ungodly, unprecedented speed. Why did it have to start here? Where is the yearning for Human or Goodnight, Travel Well? It does not have the pace to hold a candle to Mr. Brightside, the unfortunate and inevitable experience of clubs and pubs across the country. As it blisters your ears and pounds your skull time and time again, we must look deeper at Mr. Brightside.
What is it about this track from The Killers which maintains this notoriety usually reserved for the all-time greats? Mr. Brightside is certainly not up there. It moves as a pop track, fine enough. Serviceable sounds which will never breach the potent jealousy which rips through the best of the genre. Still, there is fun to be had with Brandon Flowers and the track which propelled the band into our ears forever more. It is a good song – make no mistake about that. There is depth to it, shallower now the well is drying up and listeners, contemporary or otherwise, want more from their listens. Paranoia on the Vegas Strip must be more than this, surely? Flowers writes well but it is the short and sweet stanzas which produce a well-meaning and strict tempo for the band to follow with. It marks an imitable quality which would forever change pop.
But in hindsight, it feels lax and loose, a flavourless step towards the middling experiences of paranoia. Who does this with what person? It all feels non-specific despite being an intimate and awkward experience lived in by Flowers. There is not an arena, pub or bar in the world not playing this song at least once in its monthly run-through – aside from the bar next door to this single-paned flat where nothing but the finest Gerry Rafferty and Blondie makes its way through the cracks with the cold air. B-Side Smile Like You Mean It is more a sign the band had more to mature through than the breakup fever which gripped their chart-topping debut. It is a far more flavourful piece than Mr. Brightside and has remnants of soulful, art and glam-rock variables. An overbaked Suede song from the wrong generation which would feature on Hot Fuss.
Shades of brilliance compounded and smacked about by a contemporary fuse which still burns bright. Mr. Brightside is an annoying slice of solid quality, overworked and flogged to death by the capacity for its easily remembered lyrics and the pace it sets. For all its vibrance – and this is reflected in Smile Like You Mean It too – there is a steadiness to The Killers. A mathematical endurance test which solidifies their music as memorable through catches and beats whirring away in the background. Part of the justification for it as a pub classic is the ease with which we find ourselves enjoying and later enduring its performances. We may never remember the first time we hear it but those early days of listening to this are gloriously removed from the pangs of real-world horror. Mr. Brightside is an overplayed wreck with glimmers of its former glory sticking around, a contemporary nightmare but a historic high for The Killers.
