The enduring appeal of Mr. Brightside

March 19, 2018 5:14 AM

There's some hot fuss about the song Mr. Brightside by The Killers which, after an initially poor chart run, has now totalled 200 weeks in the UK Top 100. Here, it's averaged 878,000 streaming service plays a week this year, and is the most streamed track released prior to 2010; it also remains popular in the USA. Matrimonially banned from singing it, the song is firmly embedded in popular culture and can be spoken as sports commentary, as many covers abound and memes proliferate. As ubiquitous as Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars from 2006, next year there will be teenagers born *after* both these songs were released. The Google autocomplete lyrics and the actual lyrics; the original demo and back story. (Previously)
posted by Wordshore (51 comments total)

Yeah, I shoehorned Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol into that post as it has a similar popularity trajectory, though a different demographic of devoted listeners - and a weird hold on many in this country. At the end of events such as a wedding reception, birthday bash, leaving do, christmas party or whatever - when you have a room of middle aged and, in varying degrees, drunk English people - put Chasing Cars on the sound system and watch the tears immediately flow all around you.

(Experiment can also be replicated, to a lesser effect, with Keane's Somewhere Only We Know and Coldplay's Fix You.)
posted by Wordshore at 5:31 AM on March 19, 2018 [8 favorites]

I was super into it the first time around as a wee university student; even back then I was annoyed but pleased in that unbearable way when it got the second wave. Now our terrible, 50-something Clarkson-esque CEO sends us messages referencing it.

Given the lyrical content it's an odd one to have caught on so massively, similar to Every Breath You Take, I guess?
posted by ominous_paws at 5:36 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

This tweet is my favourite Mr. Brightside joke.
posted by Beardman at 5:37 AM on March 19, 2018 [10 favorites]

Mr. Brightside is one of those songs that will guarantee my turning-down the radio when it pops up.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:41 AM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

I never believed that she was really just touching his chest.
posted by 4ster at 5:47 AM on March 19, 2018 [12 favorites]

Also I'm old enough to remember when the charts were the "Top 30", not 40, 50, 100 or more, and you would hear them first around dinner time on sunday on Radio One and try and record the songs you liked on a C60 cassette tape you had bought from WH Smiths the day before, then discuss them the next day in the school playground while eating a Penguin (working class kids) or Wagon Wheel (middle class kids) from the tuck club, and if you really liked a song you would sneak out at lunchtime and go to Woolworths and spend your lunch money on a 45rpm single because you did not get a clean recording the previous evening as Mike Read had talked over the end of the song because he was an asshole presenter, and then you'd watch the performers mime to the song on Top of the Pops after being introduced by that weird Jimmy Saville bloke who seemed to make everyone around him uncomfortable (or you would possibly watch Pam's People dance to it in clothing that was puzzlingly revealing when you were so young) the following thursday at 7:30pm, which was on straight after Judith Hann showing you nonsense inventions like a telephone with no cord as part of Tomorrow's World, and get off my lawn millenials with your goddamed streaming and iThings just get off
posted by Wordshore at 5:50 AM on March 19, 2018 [29 favorites]

My favorite Mr. Brightside joke is this one
posted by clavicle at 6:16 AM on March 19, 2018 [16 favorites]

My other favourite Mr. Brightside joke is this one here
posted by Beardman at 6:24 AM on March 19, 2018 [27 favorites]

I got to see The Killers live on their latest tour a few months ago. I’m not the hugest fan - I like their stuff, but I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way to see them if it hadn’t been part of a birthday gift for a friend. They put on an absolutely incredible live show; it was a great time.

I mention this because they played Mr. Brightside as their encore. Now, I’ve been to a lot of shows, everything from guy-with-guitar-in-tiny-bar to Kanye West at MSG. I saw Hamilton, with the original cast, at the height of its popularity. I’ve been to concerts in the US and abroad. I’ve seen some sets that were so high-energy they were basically religious experiences (looking at you, Hold Steady). I have never, in my entire life, seen a collection of human beings go as absolutely bananas as that stadium did when the first few notes of Mr. Brightside started. Now I know what the split-second before a full-blown riot starts feels like.
posted by Itaxpica at 6:27 AM on March 19, 2018 [29 favorites]

My favorite Mr. Brightside joke is this one
posted by haileris23 at 6:42 AM on March 19, 2018 [21 favorites]

I didn't recognize the name of the song, so I followed the YouTube link to listen to it and... I don't recognize the song either or understand what the appeal is.

Same for "Chasing Cars." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(I do technically own a television though...)
posted by Foosnark at 6:52 AM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]

The Michigan Stadium sing-a-long in the rain mentioned in the Michigan Daily article is here (twitter video) and is pretty charming.
posted by thatquietgirl at 6:56 AM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

or understand what the appeal is.

Jealousy is one of those almost universal emotions. The sick feeling in the pit of your stomach when someone you like romantically is going to be intimate with another. This song almost perfectly encapsulates it.
posted by Talez at 6:59 AM on March 19, 2018 [15 favorites]

My favourite Killers track is still Human though.
posted by Talez at 7:00 AM on March 19, 2018 [7 favorites]

I never believed that she was really just touching his chest.

My theory is that the popularity of the song is almost entirely related to this lyric. It always puts me in mind of 'Charlie had a pigeon' from when we were kids. Basically Brits love a good bit of smutty misdirection.
posted by biffa at 7:03 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]

My favorite Mr Brightside joke is their new song "I'm the Man" or whatever it is called. But that supplanted "Are we humans? Or are we dancers?"

I guess I'm saying is that I still like that song because the coked up Rolling Stones period wasn't as ridiculous.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:14 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Though it's always weird seeing the Royal Albert Hall as a concert venue, here's their 2009 performance of the song there, after some preamble.
posted by Wordshore at 7:14 AM on March 19, 2018

It's a good running song - would be interesting to see if all the streaming plays come from popular playlists or whether people just want to crank Mr Brightside all the time by itself.
posted by GuyZero at 7:24 AM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]

My theory is that the popularity of the song is almost entirely related to this lyric.

I think it's a factor, but it wouldn't work if the rest of the song wasn't impeccably rhymed and the imagery so vivid. Even when the lyrics get abstract in the chorus, it's 100% clear what it's about and what the emotions are.

The aborted rhyme just puts it over the top.
posted by Merus at 7:59 AM on March 19, 2018 [9 favorites]

The Michigan Stadium sing-a-long in the rain mentioned in the Michigan Daily article is here (twitter video) and is pretty charming.

That was pretty impressive, considering the size of Michigan Stadium -- seeing 100k people singing Mr. Brightside in the rain at a football game almost made me rethink my feelings toward UMich.

My favorite Killers song is still All These Things That I've Done.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:04 AM on March 19, 2018 [9 favorites]

The Killers are one of my guilty pleasures, and I love this song so unreasonably much. We saw them years ago, must have been their tour for Day & Age, and the encore was All These Things That I've Done, confetti burst out over the audience, and it was rapturous. I'm usually too much of an indie snob to enjoy stadium shows, but that was among the best shows I've ever been to.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 8:21 AM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]

So even though I got the tweeted jokes and could probably hum along to it if I wanted to my brain apparently thinks Mr Brightside and Such Great Heights are the same song? I had to relisten to both to get the difference. They're not even that similar.
posted by dinty_moore at 8:31 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Obviously the popularity comes from the perfect, ridiculous casting of Eric Roberts as Evil Casanova in the video.
posted by jason_steakums at 8:46 AM on March 19, 2018 [7 favorites]

I always took the repeated I never to be a denial that the whole thing was Faustian.
posted by hawthorne at 9:01 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

Foosnark: I didn't recognize the name of the song, so I followed the YouTube link to listen to it and... I don't recognize the song either or understand what the appeal is.

Me, three. I usually am at least aware of songs that get popular like this but...I have zero memories of ever hearing this song before. Was it a niche thing?
posted by wenestvedt at 9:34 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

Favorite Killers anecdote: last time they played Bill Graham Civic in SF, bar crew is setting up in the auditorium during sound check, and the band is riffing on "I think we're alone now", trying to decide if they're gonna add it to the night's set list.

Some Gandalf out on the floor (who obviously remembered the 20th century vividly) calls out to them something like "Do you really want to do that? Tommy James and the Shondells was a long time ago, is anyone even gonna get it?" (Dude must have been part of their production somehow; Auditorium bars sometimes aren't even allowed in to set up during sound check for some bands. You'd get sent home and fired if one of us tried that).

The singer kinda smiled and and announced "Yeah, there was a cover version by Tiffany when we were kids, so our fans will remember it."

They played multiple nights at BGC, and it was interesting to see the same band back to back nights. The first night they were kinda... there. Second night, Their energy was way more up. Which was cool to see. THey have to put on the same show night after night, and I'm not surprised they go through ups and downs.

Five nights of Swedish House Mafia at BGC was HELL. It was exactly the same show, not for note, beat for beat, confetti blast for confetti blast. Three shadowy figures atop a giant Jumbotron. They pressed "SPACEBAR" at the beginning and then danced in place for two hours as the program ran.

Give me REAL humans playing physical instruments any day.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 9:38 AM on March 19, 2018 [10 favorites]

Oh wow it looks like someone recorded one of their performances of "I think we're alone now" in SF.
posted by Talez at 9:44 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]

It had genuinely never occurred to me that the end of the verse was an aborted rhyme and I had to go right through the lyrics to find out where the one referred to might be. (Or maybe it did occur to me 14 years ago and it's now such a part of the auditory furniture that I'd forgotten.)
posted by corvine at 9:51 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

When I was working on Lineage 2 (Korean MMO that never did super well in the US) MTV picked us and this song to do a video of. I remain fond of the song, but the video is completely, bafflingly unrelated to the song.
posted by restless_nomad at 10:28 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

Give me REAL humans playing physical instruments any day

Okay but ARE they humans?
posted by curious nu at 10:34 AM on March 19, 2018 [10 favorites]

The best, most underrated Killers song will always be this. Still gets me through tough days.
posted by alon at 10:57 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

I adore the Killers, full stop.

I also absolutely believe that part of the lingering appeal of "Mr. Brightside" is that frisson of sexual tension in the ambiguity of what and toward whom the narrator is feeling, that makes this not quite just a straightforward betrayal/heartbreak song. Is the narrator jealous of the guy, the girl, both of them? Is this feeling jealousy, sexual arousal, some mixture or something else?
posted by nicebookrack at 11:26 AM on March 19, 2018 [13 favorites]

TVTropes uses "Mr. Brightside" lyrics in the example quotes for Netorare / cuckolding, a porn genre you should not google at work.
posted by nicebookrack at 11:28 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

There are tons of little details in the song that really make it standout to me. The second verse where he emphasizes “I’ve been doing JUST fine” with a sort is squeal in the timber of his voice is a standout for me, and really pushes that feeling that a lot of people have gone through where we’re trying to reassure ourselves that we’re okay, although we’re not okay. That second verse also has a great call-and-response moment through the use of the mix, where the instruments drop out for a second and you get that radio-sounding effect where he says “it was only a kiss”, and then immediately the drums come in while he says it again without the effect. Smart use of songwriting and production to create an audience-interaction moment. That second verse is really what propels the song forward in my opinion, because that moment creates a synergy with the audience. They’ve captured the audience’s attention by first describing the situation, then you have the catchy chorus, but when you get the audience to actually interact with your lyrics, and therefore actually have to listen to them, then the song is big.

The biggest aspect of the song for me, above the synths and everything, is the bass tone. It’s a sort of fuzzy, driving bass that really fits well in the mix of the song, sitting somewhere in front of the guitar a little bit but also piercing through the synths, while still carrying the rhythm. It’s a great bass tone that fits the song.

But my favorite Killers song is All These Things That I’ve Done. I’ve turned that song on at parties and seen 50+ people go absolutely batshit for it. Lots of good memories of that song.
posted by gucci mane at 11:41 AM on March 19, 2018 [14 favorites]

I know I hate this song passionately but I've finally come to a place in time where I've forgotten the tune and whatever lyrics used to irk me. Kids used to fucking love that song. I lump it in with something else I hate from that era and have blessedly forgotten the sounds of-- "Yellowcard." It's really nice to not be plagued by them through the mention of them anymore.
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:42 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

I remember when this album first came out there was a widely held fan theory that it was a concept album about a serial killer. And a lot was made are about the guys in the band being Mormons. Remembering the weird rumors has made all subsequent discussions of and articles about The Killers far, far more entertaining as far as I'm concerned.

My favourite Killers song is All These Things That I've Done but the whole album is pretty solid.
posted by fshgrl at 11:51 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

Is the narrator jealous of the guy, the girl, both of them? Is this feeling jealousy, sexual arousal, some mixture or something else?

Why 'Hot Fuss' by the Killers is about a Murderous Homosexual Relationship. I hadn't heard of the Killers Murder Trilogy theory before, so it's a neat article.
posted by figurant at 12:03 PM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]

The serial killer explanation goes like this: in Mr Brightside he's obsessed with a prostitute. Who he subsequently abducts (smile like you mean it) and murders (all these things that I've done) having previously murdered his fiancee but gotten out of jail ( Jenny you're a friend of mine). Then he goes on a spree of meeting girls in Vegas and killing while growing more insane. I can't remember it all but it's brilliant in an insane conspiracy theory kind of way. I'm sure the whole thing is immortalized on the internet somewhere. I think the band even had to refute it.
posted by fshgrl at 12:17 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sometimes I feel like I've suddenly been put in this timeline from another one. I gave the song a listen, and nope: never heard it before. Course, I'm an old, and deeply unhip, so that explains a lot, but I know other Killers songs, but definitely not this one.
posted by zardoz at 2:25 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

One of the most baffling phenomena is encountering a karaoke song list that contains a bunch of Killers songs but not "Mr. Brightside". How is this even possible? "Somebody Told Me", "When You Were Young", and "Smile Like You Mean It"? Yes, of course, naturally. "Human"? A banger, no doubt. "Spaceman"? Sure, I guess. "Dustland Fairytale"? Now you're just fucking with me.
posted by mhum at 3:16 PM on March 19, 2018 [7 favorites]

You say kids who were in high school 10 years ago are just getting out into the world and having kids and nostalgic for their youth? This is how people only ever like the music they like when they were 16! The rule holds.
posted by rhizome at 3:28 PM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]

My snarky comment aside, I do like the song, and this live version is great.
posted by 4ster at 3:42 PM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

Surprised that no one has mentioned the many mashups (Gravity Falls being my favorite, and my husband's ringtone, so me listening to all the versions in this thread is driving him batty)
posted by okayokayigive at 4:25 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Honestly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen is Google knows what I mean when I type in Mr Brheghthede.
posted by brook horse at 6:46 PM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]

I was completely unaware of these guys until a friend scored some free tix to a show in Oakland late last year. I thought they were damn good - badass drummer, in particular. Made not leaving during Weezer totally worth it! The one song I'd heard perviously I had assumed was sung by Justin Timbelake. Now I know better!
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 8:55 PM on March 19, 2018

Fuck I love these guys!!!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:09 PM on March 19, 2018

Whenever this song gets stuck in my head it always transitions into David Bowie's "Queen Bitch" at that cab line:

Now I'm falling asleep
And she's calling a cab
Because my stomach feels small
There's a taste in my mouth
And it's no taste at all
posted by jason_steakums at 9:17 PM on March 19, 2018 [5 favorites]

I'm not sure it's my favourite Killers song, but top 5 for sure. I like it for the music rather than the lyrics, which aren't that great, but lyrics are not their strong point on Hot Fuss. For example, I love All These Things That I Have Done but have had trouble with the lyrics ever since a friend pointed out that "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" makes absolutely no sense, soldiers not particularly being known for their soul the way, say, vicars or James Brown might be. But again, the music is just gorgeous and infectious and I love it.

Lyrically, they did much better on Sam's Town, from which my favourite has to be When You Were Young. And then they lost it again with Day and Age - great tunes, sure, but are we human or are we dancer? Not even dancers, but dancer, singular. I just can't even. Fun driving music though.
posted by Athanassiel at 12:25 AM on March 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

My favorite Killers song, possibly because I know all the lyrics, can relate to it and the fact that it's so nostalgic for me. I heard it when I was a kid and all my friends that used to be alternative liked (like?) it.

Also, see: Mr. Birdside. I freaking love this comic because it's so unnecessarily dramatic. With birds.
posted by starlybri at 4:32 AM on March 20, 2018 [5 favorites]

Super fun to plan on the drums, too.
posted by gottabefunky at 11:55 AM on March 20, 2018

This is the canonically the best Mr. Brightside joke.

I guess I'm saying is that I still like that song because the coked up Rolling Stones period wasn't as ridiculous.

You should watch the music video.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:53 PM on March 25, 2018