When "Mr. Brightside" came out in 2003, the world shrugged. But the song by the Killers has endured, and then some. More than a year after its release, it peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard charts, but it has kept right on enduring. By 2017, Vox declared the song had reached meme status. (Witness Cameron Diaz singing along in the movie The Holiday.) And now, as "Mr. Brightside" turns 20 years old, the New York Times has anointed it a "generation's anthem" for millennials. "If boomers gave the masses 'Don't Stop Believin,' millennials can claim 'Mr. Brightside' as the generation's official entry into that canon: a song that gets everybody at the bar shout-singing along," writes Jessica M. Goldstein.
It's not exactly upbeat subject matter: Lead singer Brandon Flowers is imagining the woman he loves with another guy, and he's not handling it so well. "Now they're going to bed/And my stomach is sick/And it's all in my head/But she's touching his chest now." Nevertheless, "Mr. Brightside" has become a go-to shout-along song at clubs, weddings, karaoke nights, etc. "It's strangely upbeat, for an angry song," director Nancy Meyers of the aforementioned Cameron Diaz movie tells the Times, saying she felt as if it were written for her film. "Cheating on people, that's not going out of style."
In a band interview with the Guardian, members say they are not at all bored with the song, despite playing it at every live show. "There is this reciprocal magic that happens between us on the stage and people watching us," says drummer Ronnie Vannucci. "And it just goes. It's like if you sing Happy Birthday and you don't think. It's just Happy Birthday now." Flowers echoed the point. "I'm able to feed off of the excitement of somebody who's there, hearing it for the first time," he says. "I still get a thrill. My concern is that it's going to turn on us and there's going to be a backlash, but it just keeps growing." (More music stories.)
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