Brandon Flowers Blind-Ranks The Killers’ Essential Tracks: Where ‘Mr. Brightside’ Lands

Brandon Flowers offers his unique perspective on The Killers’ most iconic tracks in a new blind-ranking video, ahead of his solo UK and Ireland tour.

Earlier this year, NME sat down with Flowers to discuss his latest solo album, Thrasher, released in August. During the interview, Flowers agreed to rank five standout tracks from The Killers’ discography in blind order, keeping the selection unpredictable.

The first track up was 2006’s When You Were Young. Flowers noted the band remains “grateful for, still,” reflecting on initial worries that their second album might not live up to the success of debut Hot Fuss. He recalled the moment: “The way the room looked and the way it felt when ‘When You Were Young’ started to sizzle, I think we knew we were going to be OK.” We then asked Flowers how he would rate the track Human, a song he worked on in London while touring for Sam’s Town.

Next up was The Man from 2017’s Wonderful Wonderful, which Flowers acknowledged “sort of saved” the album, though it wouldn’t claim the top spot. He ranked Read My Mind highly from the Sam’s Town era, yet confessed, “secretly, in my heart think ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ might be better sometimes.” He concluded by sharing his verdict on the band’s most iconic track, Mr. Brightside.

“It’s a song that is very much associated with the band, you may have heard of it,” he quipped. He then broke down how the song came to be, saying it was written in response to Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back in Anger”: “I had seen Oasis a few months before I met Dave Keuning, and I was blown away by the reception that it got at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. There was something different, and I was like, ‘I want that’.”

View the video below to witness Flowers’ blind ranking, and share your own rankings in the comments:

Brandon Flowers launches his solo tour across the UK and Ireland this week, kicking off October 14 at the O2 Academy in Bournemouth. From there, he’ll perform at London’s Royal Albert Hall before making his way to Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and more, concluding with a show at the Olympia in Dublin on October 27.

Flowers’ Thrasher earned a four-star rating from NME, with news editor Andrew Trendell writing: “After the gentle radio rock of his debut solo album Flamingo to the assured electro-pop of follow-up The Desired Effect, Thrasher is another signpost of how far Flowers has come as a writer away from the glitz and arena pomp of The Killers.”

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