When I was writing for Optigrab, I would advertise the website as covering “movies, TV, and sometimes music.” Music was the infrequent third wheel that I desperately wanted to make more of a regular presence on the website. However, I wasn’t nearly as game to opening myself up to every new release. It was all scary and new, and at best I would be able to create ongoing narratives for artists I had followed for years.
I’m talking about people like Katy Perry, who I had been paying attention to since she was touring on The Van’s Warped Tour and dating that guy from Gym Class Heroes. It was in part because I believed she was a one-hit-wonder, but “Teenage Dream” and later “Prism” kept proving me wrong. Was she great? Rarely, but I had something to work with when contextualizing my opinions. I could chart her growth and do my best to understand the missing nuance of “Swish Swish” in relation to “Hot and Cold.”
With this rebirth, I have a chance again to remove something from the equation. I need to find ways to make the music feel more crucial to the identity of this website. Instead of reviewing exclusively new music, I am challenging myself to pick an album every Monday to go long on. It can be new, but I have to find an angle that is interesting or forces me to ask questions. I need to come to terms with the albums’ content and wonder why I think it matters.
Anyways, I’m starting with The Killer’s debut “Hot Fuss.”
If I’m being honest, there have been few records that have permeated the culture from around 2004 as much as The Killers. If you can, name an album from the time that continues to have as much radio play as “Hot Fuss.” Sure we still hear Usher’s “Yeah!” blaring through every commercial break, but there’s not really another single off of “Confessions.” Coldplay maybe comes the closest with “The Scientist” and “Clocks,” though it’s easy to get them mixed up with every other album they’ve released. Even Green Day’s “American Idiot,” another powerhouse record of the time, feels largely reduced to “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” There may be albums with as many great songs as “Hot Fuzz,” but I don’t find myself stuck in my car hearing three or four songs from any album I bought in my Freshman year of high school as much as that one.
With exception to “Smile Like You Mean It” (and even then, only slightly), their four singles have parked their home on almost every radio station. Even as Los Angeles’ KROQ 106.7 has moved more towards the Mumford & Sons style of rock, there is still that guitar that breaks through. It sprinkles like raindrops falling from a ledge in melancholic, manic synchronicity. With only eight notes being plucked, it builds, singer Brandon Flowers appearing as if from a door. It’s the start to “Mr. Brightside,” their first single. It’s a story about a man thinking of his girlfriend's potential affair, and the repression of his character overwhelms him. He must look for the good in all of this (“it was only a kiss”), though how could you? Even the instruments sound depressed.
In about four minutes, The Killers wrote a pop song that has become their calling card. Even with a phenomenal career ahead of them, there’s this sense that they never topped it. Whole essays have been written about why “Mr. Brightside” is a perfect pop song. Even the more salacious follow-up single “Somebody Told Me” couldn’t hold a candle, but not from a lack of trying. If any song suggested that this was a band from Las Vegas, NV, it was this one. In the most dizzying gender-bending chorus since Blur’s “Boys and Girls,” Flowers suggests “Well somebody told me/You had a boyfriend/Who looked like a girlfriend/That I had in February of last year.” What did it all mean?
Who cared, it was fun and found the band established itself as the new wave/post-punk alternative to the other “The” bands of the time like The Strokes, The Hives, and The Vines. They were a band that sounded like they played on The Las Vegas Strip, giving tales of what worlds lied inside those casinos, glowing deep into space with lights that blinded passerbys with awe. There was also the sense that once you looked past the lights there was a tragedy that never gets reported from all of the bands who take up residencies in Sin City.
There is a sense of remorse and humanity underneath “Mr. Brightside” and “Somebody Told Me.” Flowers isn’t just singing about the kinky lives he fell into. He’s singing like a man trying to cope with his place in the glitz and glamor. As the synthesizers and larger-than-life guitars harmonize, he sings for his life. He’s not afraid to go flamboyant during a time when rock was more masculine. The final cries that end “Somebody Told Me” capture a madness that goes beyond figuring out the gender of your lover. It’s one about how frustrating it is to have a normal dating life. He just so happened to choose one of the wildest examples this side of a Prince number.
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The Killers definitely felt like a 21st-century band even if they were more reminiscent of a Duran Duran spectacle. They were a Las Vegas band with a deeper heart than one we had seen from Frank Sinatra. This wasn’t “Luck Be a Lady Tonight.” This was about the sense of being down on your luck when you go broke on a single hand that felt like a sure deal. It was a feeling that everyone could understand, and it could be populated with seedy characters like hookers and serial killers without seeming like an Ice Cube song. It was creatively dangerous and felt like The Strip in song form. By the time that “Hot Fuss” came along on June 7, 2004, they had pretty much staked their claim. They were about to release one of the best-selling albums in England and launch a career that hasn’t gone away. In fact, they recently released the new single “Caution” ahead of their sixth studio album “Imploding the Mirage.”
I remember picking up the album a little late. I had recently started high school and had walked two miles to the nearest Target to pick up two records that have since gone on to define the era. The more relevant one to me was “American Idiot,” which I immediately sat down and listened to in a nearby Carl’s Jr., feeling like the world was about to change. Then there was the other album I got on a combined sale of $15 (I miss when Target had good deals on media). I’m not sure if I had been inundated by The Killers at that point, but something spoke to me to buy that record.
The reviews ranged from disappointing to really good. They were different enough at the time from other popular bands like My Chemical Romance, Queens of the Stone Age, and Fall Out Boy that they felt more novelty. Even then, they transcended my corner of rock music and could be seen playing during MTV Video Music Awards. They were allowed to be everywhere, and it was only a hint of what their long term plans were. So far their only accomplishments were releasing two singles that sounded like condensed soap operas.
Their most interesting element is their name. Why are they called The Killers? It doesn’t make sense unless you’re one of those people who shrug their shoulders and say “It just sounds cool. Why are they called Weezer? They just are, okay?” For the most part, I took it for granted until I became aware of what is referred to by Killers fans as “The Murder Trilogy.” While “Hot Fuss” could be read like a compilation of really good songs, it holds two-thirds of a musical chronology of a murder. The only thing that could possibly take you off the scent is that they were presented in reverse order as if Flowers and crew were pulling a Memento (2001) on its audience.
Jump forward to the B-Sides compilation “Sawdust,” and you’ll get the song “Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf.” It’s the start of a relationship with Jennifer, which includes drinking and behaving foolishly. Cutting back to “Hot Fuss,” the story continues on “Midnight Show” where an erotic encounter goes horribly wrong and the listener is witnessing the crime. Then there’s the unassuming beginning, track one of “Hot Fuss” with “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.” In the chorus, Flowers suggests “There ain’t no motives for this crime/Jenny was a friend of mine.” While it’s ambiguous in that text, placing it alongside what we know only makes this an ominous way to launch your career. Considering that some conspiracy theorists believe that the whole album is about a homosexual relationship gone wrong, the album feels way more ambitious than watching strippers while you’re miserable.
The long term effects of The Killers were abundantly clear in their ability to write catchy songs. I still remember watching them on KROQ’s annual Weenie Roast for the first time. They streamed it over their website, so I got to see Flowers wander the stage, breaking into “All These Things That I’ve Done.” It was a powerful moment. I had never heard the song before, so seeing him get a crowd worked up as they sang “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier” made me understand his ability to captivate. The song itself would become their third radio staple from the album, and one that has come back at odd times thanks to Nike commercials. I also heard my friend sing it at karaoke once and I swore that the entire room sang along. It might’ve just been that the recording is that immersive, but it makes you feel involved as if experiencing something spiritual.
On some level, it didn’t make sense why I didn’t resent The Killers. I was really into punk rock at the time, more knowledgeable of every NOFX EP than anything in the Top 40. However, whereas Fat Mike faded, Brandon Flowers still kept showing up. “Hot Fuss” would go through cycles where I listened adamantly before being put back on the shelf. I don’t really understand why, especially since I didn’t care about any album since. A girl I liked in high school told me that her favorite album was “Sam’s Town,” so I gave it a listen. It was one of our few disagreements. The Killers weren’t bad after that, but their debut was way too explosive for anything to be that good again.
Even then, this record fascinates me because it’s already one of the pieces from my high school years that has formed a pop culture permanence. People today can hear “Mr. Brightside” and have some clue that that was what early-2000s music sounded like. It’s funny, especially given the uproar around The Strokes at the time as this revolutionary band. While this isn’t to discredit “Is This It,” they aren’t nearly as prominent in defining the era when it comes to radio plays. Sure, I still get nostalgia off of “Someday,” but The Killers still feel like that immediate thrust back to a moment. I even heard “Midnight Show” while perusing at a Book-Off last year, and I thought that I had lost my mind. For a record with middling reviews at the time, it’s really held up well.
I started with “Hot Fuss” because it’s a record that fascinates me culturally. Whereas other albums of the time were more successful (remember OutKast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below”?), “Hot Fuss” just had them beat. The only rock song that comes close in influence from 2004 is maybe The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” but even that feels like it permeated into a sports chant and lost any musical identity beyond it. This column isn’t specifically a look back at my high school record collection. I hope to go anywhere and everywhere so long as I have something to say. I wanted to start here because I had been driving around a bit lately and kept hearing this album on the radio and felt the need to explore.
I’m thinking that next Monday may be less of a classic record from another band that was influential throughout the 2000s. I’m thinking of visiting Blink-182 in the “Neighborhoods.”
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