The Killers

Editorial Review

Event Details

Music Type:

Pop

Editorial Review

While Las Vegas is mostly known as the place music stars go to die, in 2002 a new flower bloomed in the desert, namely Brandon Flowers and his neon post-punk outfit The Killers. The hype began almost immediately for them and the first song Flowers and guitarist Dave Keuning wrote: Mr. Brightside. UK label Lizard King had cottoned onto the hype around the band, particularly their love of gloomy English pop acts The Cure, The Smiths and even Oasis, and released the single in late 2003. Within six months the hype was bubbling over for their debut Hot Fuss, released worldwide.

The album spawned stylish, dramatic and haughty synth-rock hit after hit: Somebody Told Me, Mr. Brightside, Smile Like You Mean It,All These Things that I've Done. Worldwide, they overtook Interpol and The Strokes as the hip band that actually had pop smarts, earning five Grammy nominations and selling five million copies of Hot Fuss. They could seemingly do no wrong. Then in 2006, Flowers announced that their next album, Sam's Town was going to be “one of the best albums in past 20 years”. Critics and fans didn't think so, his grandiose Springsteen-esque odes failing to top Hot Fuss's success.

Andrew Tijs, November 2006