Mr. Brightside (2003)

"Mr. Brightside" is a song by American rock band the Killers. It appears on their debut studio album, Hot Fuss (2004). Written by band members Brandon Flowers and Dave Keuning, it was one of the first songs the Killers ever wrote. Two music videos were made for the song: the first one was shot in black and white and features the band performing in an empty room, and the second one was based on the 2001 film Moulin Rouge!.

The song was released as the Killers' debut single on September 29, 2003, but became more popular when re-released in 2004, peaking at number 10 in both the United States and the United Kingdom. It is the Killers' best-selling song in the US, where it has sold over 3.5 million copies. In the United Kingdom, it is the third biggest selling/streaming song of all time and is the longest-charting single on the UK Official Singles Chart Top 100, having spent over 500 weeks (10 years) on the chart, and is the most streamed track released prior to 2010. It is also one of the top fifteen most downloaded rock tracks ever in the United Kingdom and is the most successful single to never top the British charts. It is one of only two songs to have been certified 10× Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry for 6 million units.

"Mr. Brightside" was named "Song of the Decade" by UK radio stations Absolute Radio and XFM, and in April 2010 Last.fm revealed that it was the most-listened-to track since the launch of the online music service, with the track being played over 7.66 million times. In October 2010, it was voted ninth in the Greatest Guitar Riffs of the 21st century so far by Total Guitar magazine. Additionally, in 2010 Rolling Stone listed "Mr. Brightside" as the 48th-best song of the 2000s decade, and in 2021, it was ranked number 378 in the same magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list.

Recording and production

Lyrically, "Mr. Brightside" depicts a true story of Brandon Flowers' jealousy and paranoia when he walked into a bar in Las Vegas and found his girlfriend cheating on him. Flowers began writing the song after gaining inspiration from the end of his first relationship while staying in his sister's room. "I was asleep and I knew something was wrong," he said. "I have these instincts. I went to the Crown and Anchor, a bar in Vegas, and my girlfriend was there with another guy."

Guitarist Dave Keuning composed the music before meeting Flowers. Flowers then wrote lyrics and composed the chorus after hearing Keuning's ideas. Flowers credits the speed of the song's creation to its having only one verse. He says, "We went in and made demos pretty quickly after that, and it took a ton of time. That's also why there's not a second verse... I just didn't have any other lines, and it ended up sticking." Drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. is credited with creating the fast-paced drum beat in the first twenty-two seconds. The "calling a cab" section of the song has both a musical and textual similarity to the middle section of the song "Queen Bitch" from David Bowie's album Hunky Dory (1971). He also took inspiration from Iggy Pop's "monotone delivery" on his Lust for Life (1977) song "Sixteen".The song was mixed for its inclusion on Hot Fuss by Mark Needham, along with business partners Braden Merrick and Jeff Saltzman. The song was first created as a reference mix in just over half an hour "on an 8-input console, with no automation" according to Needham. Despite several subsequent remixes, the members of the Killers preferred the original one, which then made it onto the record. In recording the vocal effects, Saltzman used Echo Farm, sticking with the default vocal effects setting. Needham says it "overdrives the vocal a bit and sets an 84 ms delay."

"Mr. Brightside" is written in the key of D♭ major with a moderately fast tempo of around 148 BPM.

History

An early demo of the song featured Dave Keuning on bass and Matt Norcross on drums, before Mark Stoermer and Ronnie Vannucci were members of the band. The original demo was officially released on the 2013 compilation album Direct Hits. On the Killers' 2012 album Battle Born, they released "Miss Atomic Bomb", which Flowers considered a companion song to "Mr. Brightside".

In their first performance together as the Killers, Flowers and Keuning played "Mr. Brightside" as part of a two-song open-mic night set at Las Vegas' Cafe Roma. Of the performance, Flowers says "It was terrible, awful." In November 2001, the group had recorded "Mr. Brightside" along with three other demos including "Desperate", "Replaceable", and "Under the Gun" at Mike Sak's Kill the Messenger Studio in Henderson, Nevada. They handed out a demo of the song for free during their shows in 2002. After signing with UK indie label Lizard King Records, the track was sent to radio as a buzz single and it was frequently played by BBC Radio 1 DJ's Zane Lowe and Steve Lamacq as well as being play-listed by XFM. Just one week after its April release, MTV2 secured a deal to air the song for a week.