The stats clocked up by The Killers' debut single Mr. Brightside are truly extraordinary.
Initially released in the UK in September 2003 by indie label Lizard King in a limited run of just 500 CD singles, then re-released in May 2004 ahead of the emergence of the Las Vegas quartet's debut album Hot Fuss, the song currently has just south of three billion plays on Spotify (making it the most streamed song from the 2000s on the platform) and 621 million plays on YouTube. It has been on the UK charts for an astonishing 489 weeks, currently sitting at number 60, and is the biggest single of all time yet to reach Number 1 in Britain, with singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran hailing it as "the UK's alternative national anthem". Perhaps surprisingly, the song peaked at number 10 on both the UK and US singles charts, but its popularity shows no sign of slowing down.
Not a bad return for a song based on heartbreak and betrayal, and not bad for a song that didn't chart at all first time around.
The story behind Mr. Brightside is simple, and is rooted in frontman Brandon Flowers' realisation that his first serious relationship is over, when he walks into a bar in his Las Vegas hometown and sees that his girlfriend is cheating on him.
"I was asleep and I knew something was wrong," he told [now defunct] English music magazine Q in 2009. "I have these instincts. I went to the Crown and Anchor and my girlfriend was there with another guy."
Flowers wrote the lyrics when he was 19 or 20, committing the words to paper by hand. Anyone familiar with the song will know that the song's second verse is identical to the first verse: "I hadn’t written a second verse, so I just sang it again" Flowers explained to Rolling Stone in 2018.
Vocally, Flowers says that he took inspiration from David Bowie, specifically the legendary singer's urgent delivery of the lyrics to Queen Bitch, from 1971's Hunky Dory album. But, as he explained to Rolling Stone, he was actually aiming to emulate Bowie's good friend Iggy Pop in the vocal booth.
"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,” he admitted. "It’s just that I have a sweeter voice than Iggy, and I was a kid, so it came out the way it did."
"I still remember playing it at a drummer's house," he told US chat show host Seth Myers in 2019. "We went to his house and he had the drums set up in his living room, and I was on bass and Dave [Keuning] was on guitar, and I remember the hairs on my arm standing up. It was an incredible moment for me. And I didn't know it was going to grow into what it's become since, but I knew that it was good."
Flowers performed the song for the first time at the Killers' very first show, at Cafe Roma in Las Vegas, in 2002. And it's been in The Killers' set list ever since: "I never get bored of singing it," Flowers told Spin in 2015.
Talking to Rolling Stone, the singer described Mr. Brightside as "cathartic".
Who would have thought betrayal would sound so good?" he added.
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