Brandon Flowers and the other members of The Killers celebrate their 10th anniversary this year.
I never used to like bands.
Sure, I liked music. I liked individual songs and collected soundtracks and compilation albums, but I had little allegiance to any particular artist. After hearing the soaring synth opening and catchy-yet-silly lyrics of “Somebody Told Me” by new wave-revival group The Killers, however, I finally found a group with which I connected.
It’s difficult to believe that moment was nearly a decade ago, but today, The Killers are celebrating their 10th anniversary with Direct Hits, a greatest hits album with a strong set list chronicling the transformation of the Las Vegas-based band from a faux-British ensemble to a fresh slice of Americana.
Somewhere between the classic ode to envy “Mr. Brightside” and the lamentations in “Miss Atomic Bomb,” The Killers changed my perspective on what a band can do.
Before there was FreeFest, there was Virgin Fest at Pimlico Race Course. It was my first music festival, and at 13 years old, I was one of the youngest people in the crowd. That didn’t stop me from grabbing my dad’s hand and pushing forward as far as I could to see The Killers during their set.
At the show, The Killers debuted tracks from their sophomore album, Sam’s Town. It was a marked departure from the electronic beats of Hot Fuss to a more down-home rock style. Rather than being put off by the change, I was enchanted by the new, less restrained sound.
Their next studio album, Day & Age, returned to the synth-driven sound of Hot Fuss. The poppy album told a series of stories, from the surreal (“Spaceman”) to the tragic (“A Dustland Fairytale”). I saw those stories brought to life at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia my junior year of high school. The show was vibrant, colorful and oddly spiritual. Like a synth-playing pied piper, frontman Brandon Flowers made sure you were out of your seat and dancing.
Though The Killers’ last album, Battle Born, took some time to grow on me, it has become one of my favorites. The nuanced songs are carefully layered with all the things I love about the band’s past albums; some tracks are dancey, some are urgent, some are playful and some are lullabies, but all of them carefully pluck an emotion.
The band’s songs are simultaneously intimate and anthemic. Covering everything from love to redemption, from drug use to fearful conversations with God, they are powerful and poetic slices of life.
The Killers create the songs I plug into when I need to feel comforted; I have lost count of the times my mom and I have become lost in song from singing along to Sam’s Town while cleaning the house. The power you feel tapping your toe to keep beat to the mantra “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier” becomes an all-encompassing force when Flowers is commanding a sold-out crowd to chant it together.
Since I first heard them, The Killers have changed my idea of what a band can be. More than just a group of musicians, they are the storytellers I turn to when I need to hear truth. As I have grown these past 10 years, The Killers as a band have grown and changed, too. Rather than being smothered by change, The Killers have mastered it, as Direct Hits shows. Hopefully they will continue to rock these changes for decades to come.
