The Killers’ most important song, according to Brandon Flowers
Some 20 years ago, The Killers were a little-known indie band just beginning to make ripples in the UK. In their US homeland, they were an unknown entity, yet to breach the burgeoning alternative shore of MTV 2. Those days are now a thing of the past in both senses. Presently, The Killers stand as one of the few rock ‘n’ roll bands to have emerged in this strange century of music to call themselves a headline act. At the heart of that rise is ‘Mr Brightside’.
The song has become a record-breaking hit since it was first released in 2003, still receiving millions of streams every week, sustaining itself in the charts for a cumulative total of eight years and counting. But the operative phase in the previous sentence is that the song ‘has become’. Despite having accolades up to its eyeballs, the anthem was actually a sleeper hit.
The song entered the charts at 40, two years after its release, and peaked four months later in tenth place. That’s hardly the sort of charting start you’d expect from the most successful rock song of the century.
The slow rise of the mammoth song was not just something to be celebrated as a DIY win for indie, but a portent for the band. From The Knack to Gnarls Barkley, there is a list as long as Santa’s of acts that have been billed as the next big thing before faltering. This proved even more perilous when Hot Fuss, the album that housed ‘Mr Brightside’, also took off. You see, the band’s sound was of such an ilk that it perhaps meant people would demand more of the same. And more of the same inevitably leads to diminishing returns.
So, even though they had escaped obscurity and were riding high, the young band were under more pressure than ever. Thankfully, ‘When You Were Young’ provided them with another hit in a rocking tone, just different enough from what came before, but as equally anthemic, to prove that they were not one-trick ponies.
“It was an important song for us, maybe the most important song, because a lot of bands come and go,” Brandon Flowers told Entertainment Weekly when looking back over the band’s back catalogue. “We knew that Hot Fuss put us all over the world and it was a great ride, but who knows what’s gonna happen next? So yeah, when we got back, we didn’t waste any time after the tour.” They jumped straight into the studio, and ‘When You Were Young’ pretty much fell on their laps.
“When we got back together and started to sort of pursue this next chapter, it’s incredible — this was one of those moments when we were just all four of us were on the same page. ‘He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus / But he talks like a gentleman,’ that came instantly to me,” the frontman recalled with relief. “I remember driving home, and this load just lifted off my shoulders. I knew everything was gonna be all right,” he concluded.
A generation of youths can now hear the song in their heads with a burst of “KROQ” tagged onto the front, evidencing its iconic status. It ensured that The Killers weren’t a flash in the pan. Now, such a concept seems laughable—if they’re not the biggest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world then they’re certainly in the top five. According to Flowers, ‘When You Were Young’ was the most pivotal of their efforts in establishing that.
The song stayed in the charts for a whopping 20 weeks and pushed Sam’s Town right up to second place. Not bad for a little band feeling the pinch.
