Mr. Brightside and Me
Vote for my essay today in the March Danceness competition!
Welcome to a special edition issue of Microfascination!
My essay about The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” is live today in the March Danceness competition, and I would very much welcome your votes before 9am AZ time tomorrow.
Click HERE to vote for “Mr. Brightside” in Round 1!
3/14 UPDATE: Thanks to y’all, I made it to Round 2 — click HERE to vote again!
If you’d like to keep up with the results (and keep voting for my essay if it progresses!), subscribe to
for updates.And just for fun, here are ten anecdotes, favorite recordings, and bits of trivia that came up during my drafting process:
Y’all need to hear this. There are a bunch of great covers of “Mr. Brightside,” but Kelly Clarkson’s version gives me CHILLS.
My personal 2004 flashbacks. I have two vivid memories of The Killers’ music from the year 2004. One is collectively jamming out to “Somebody Told Me” with my entire art class after our teacher stepped out of the room. The second is getting scolded by a friend’s dad because he found “Mr. Brightside” inappropriate and didn’t think I should be listening to it. (Okay, but respectfully, sir, it’s ranked #378 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.) I’m interested in the way music intertwines with memory. Do I only remember these moments because of the music? If it had been a different song in either of these instances, would these recollections lose their staying power?
“Mr. Brightside” takes Hollywood! Observant listeners might have caught a brief “Brightside” cameo in this Oscar season’s Talented Mr. Ripley remix, Saltburn — Felix and Oliver belt it out on one of their drives. I couldn’t find a clip of that moment online, but of course I have to include a classic “Mr. Brightside” film appearance courtesy of Cameron Diaz in The Holiday. (To be clear, I am 100% doing this internally whenever this song comes on the radio.)
Playlist as diary. I kept a diary religiously for about two decades, eventually tapering off toward the end of college. I don’t think the impulse went away; I think my preferred form of record-keeping just shifted. It was around this time that I started keeping a diary playlist, which now holds 300+ songs. (I added “Mr. Brightside” when I got picked in the March Danceness lottery last August!) What’s been interesting is coming back to each of these songs again over the years. They all remind me of a specific instant from the past, but often things I’ve been through since add a new dimension to the music, the lyrics, or the memory. This results in a unique layering effect that makes me feel as if I’m experiencing the present and the past at once. Pretty sure this playlist is the closest I’m ever gonna get to time travel!
Best live performance? It’s hard to pick, but my favorite of The Killers’ own live “Mr. Brightside” performances might be Glastonbury, 2007. The mustache, the lighting, the sparkly outfit! Brandon Flowers’ inspired sartorial choices deserve another essay of their own.
My album art question, answered. Ever wondered what the characters on the cover of Hot Fuss mean? I always figured they meant something abstract and evocative, like “Desire” or “Immortality.” It turns out the cover image was taken in a Beijing suburb back in 2000 by the photographer Matthias Clamer, and the Chinese translates to — drumroll please — “Construction Material Development.” Hmm. Probably don’t get this one tattooed!
Battle of the music videos. There were actually two music videos created for “Mr. Brightside,” one of which was heavily inspired by Moulin Rouge!. I love tracking down music video commentaries, because they usually feature the band trying to make sense of whatever funny little three-minute plot interweaves with their song. Here’s a great one in which Flowers mentions being very enamored of Eric Roberts’ acting skills.
Surprise SpongeBob crossover. I listened to a LOT of “Mr. Brightside” performances while writing this essay, but this rendition by Plankton was probably the funniest.
Surprise Werner Herzog collab! Nothing brings me more joy than when my faves overlap, so I was thrilled to discover that Werner Herzog filmed a doc about The Killers. Herzog is one of my favorite documentarians and also the author of a memoir with an absolutely incredible title: Every Man for Himself and God Against All. Anyway, please watch this glorious clip that features Herzog asking the band whether wild donkeys ever wander across the Strip and ends with some sort of Herzog-Flowers camera face-off while an animatronic cowboy plays guitar in the background. (Shoutout to subscriber
, who was recently subjected to my reenactment of this sequence over Zoom!)How many times have The Killers performed “Mr. Brightside” live? While researching, I read that The Killers have never not played “Mr. Brightside” at a concert. At the time that I wrote my essay, their live performance tally for the song was up to 995(!). Some years back, I went to a show where the singer (not Flowers, to be clear) was obviously in a bad mood and, in response to a drunk heckler, decided to withhold one of his biggest hits from the audience. I’ve written before about the question of what performers “owe” their fans, and I don’t think there are any easy answers — but in this instance, it was admittedly a bummer that the rest of the crowd was essentially punished for the actions of one person. In any case, I’m just glad The Killers still love playing “Mr. Brightside.”
Hope y’all enjoyed this special edition issue! I had a great time writing the companion essay, “A Song Is a Room Off the Hallway of Your Life,” and I hope y’all have fun reading it. It’s been such a dream to get to participate and I’m just so grateful I had the chance to take part.
Extremely fun update from last year’s issue on the documentaries of Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb — their Reading Rainbow doc is coming to theaters starting March 17! I LOVED their nostalgic deep-dives on topics like animatronic rock bands and The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and have been eagerly anticipating this portrait of childhood hero LeVar Burton ever since. Thanks to
for the heads-up!Alrighty, folks — don’t forget to vote, and I’ll see y’all again later this month for regularly scheduled programming!
How can you not vote for The Killers? No matter when or where I am, when I hear their music, I immediately want to start moving.
Voted! Love that picture of you! And this is a great Microfascination! Yay to Werner!! Yay to a mention of me and your reenactment and subsequent monologue of your husband playing Baldur's Gate was and is hilarious! Made my weekend!!