The David Bowie song Brandon Flowers used to create The Killers’ biggest hit
In September 2003, the Las Vegas indie rock titans The Killers made their first dent in what would become a towering discography of humbling critical and commercial appeal. ‘Mr. Brightside’ arrived as the first single to preview the band’s debut album, Hot Fuss. The album was chock full of indie belters, but ‘Mr. Brightside’ remains the figurehead for The Killers.
‘Mr. Brightside’ began its life as a melody conjured up in the mind of frontman Brandon Flowers. This melody was brought to life across Dave Keuning’s fretboard and set to a danceable tempo before Flowers penned the comparatively mournful lyrics. The song tells the story of a young Flowers, dejected in unrequited love, striving to become Eric Idle’s Mr. Brightside.
“At first, all I heard was the riff. The lyrics came later,” Flowers said of ‘Mr. Brightside’ in a 2015 conversation with Spin. “This was before cell phones came along… when I first heard those chords, I wrote the lyrics down, and we didn’t waste much time.”
“We went in and made demos pretty quickly after that, and it took a ton of time,” he added. “That’s also why there’s not a second verse. The second is the same as the first. I just didn’t have any other lines and it ended up sticking. We’ve never not played that song live because it’s stood the test of time, and I’m proud of it. I never get bored of singing it.”
“Now they’re going to bed/ And my stomach is sick/ And it’s all in my head/ But she’s touching his chest now/ He takes off her dress now/ Let me go/ And I just can’t look, it’s killing me/ And taking control,” the verse reads, before bleeding into the chorus.
Reflecting on the track in a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Flowers revealed that the structure and delivery of the verse lines were inspired by David Bowie’s 1971 track ‘Queen Bitch’. “And I’m phoning a cab, ’cause my stomach feels small/There’s a taste in my mouth, but it’s no taste at all,” reads a familiar line in the Hunky Dory cut.
“I was obsessed with Hunky Dory when I was 19,” Flowers explained. “There’s an urgency to [‘Queen Bitch’], and it felt like he meant business, so I was like, ‘All right, I want to do that.'”
Continuing, Flowers revealed that Bowie’s famed collaborator and friend, Iggy Pop, also inspired the delivery. “If you listen to the Lust for Life record, Iggy does a monotone delivery on ‘Sweet Sixteen,’ and I was trying to sound like that,” Flowers added. “It’s just that I have a sweeter voice than Iggy, and I was a kid, so it came out the way it did.”
Flowers and Keuning eventually found drummer Dave Keuning, who gave the song its riotous beat. “[Matt] had the drums set up in his living room, and we still didn’t have a bass player yet, so I would just hold down the bass, and I remember we just crashed through it,” Flowers remembered. “It was amazing. It was a cathartic song. I didn’t know if that’s what everybody felt who was in a band.”
“We had a lot of songs in the early days, and I think ‘Mr. Brightside’ was the first song that we had finished writing,” Flowers continued. “Then [The Strokes album] Is This It came out, and we realised that the bar had been raised. We threw away everything we had except for ‘Mr. Brightside’ and kept writing and finished Hot Fuss.”
Listen to The Killers’ ‘Mr. Brigtside’ and David Bowie’s ‘Queen Bitch’ below.
