The Singles Jukebox

It’s up to us now to turn on the bright lights…

[Video]
[5.50]

Jonathan Bradley: Las Vegas, a mish-mash of anachronism and garish mythology. Wandering the Mojave Desert, Oedipus strikes upon the Luxor Casino, outside which stands a 106-foot-high sphinx. The monster threatens to devour our hero unless he answers a riddle. What goes as Simon Le Bon in the morning, Bruce Springsteen at noon, and Meat Loaf at night? Why it’s Brandon Flowers, says Oedipus, and the beast is defeated.
[6]

Alfred Soto: The Killers released an album in 2021. I didn’t know — until I remembered my review. When Brandon Flowers’s got his dick stuck in his pants and he yells about highways of rebel diamonds and imploding mirages he sounds ridiculous and totally himself; when he insists on the midtempo plod and his doggerel is crisply sung he’s another Las Vegas entertainer cracking his voice through “Born to Run.”
[5]

Jeffrey Brister: Yes, I am also familiar with the works of one Bruce Springsteen, and his compatriots, The E Street Band. One of the things that makes his music so good is not just the explosive wall of sound he and his band can generate (“Bright Lights” demonstrates this aspect to a serviceable degree), but also in his lyrics, which convey vivid emotions and a sense of place, history, context. They are specific. They don’t feel like placeholders or shortcuts to emotional resonance or easy references that confuse knowledge with pathos. They blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night! The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways like a vision! Adam raised a Cain! This particular point is even more important if you are attempting to mimic his vocal mannerisms and tone. All that does is make people who are familiar with and have a deep love of The Boss want to hear the real thing, which is actually pretty easy, given that Springsteen is experiencing a late-career runner of two good albums in 2019 and 2020. This aping felt cute in 2006, but now it just feels like cover-band-calibre stuff.
[4]

Harlan Talib Ockey: It feels almost unfair to fault the Killers for sounding too much like Springsteen, since they’ve released countless Springsteen pastiches over the years, but this one is unusually shallow. While it’s a competent Springsteen impression, it’s unclear what the Killers have added to make this song worth listening to rather than, say, actual Springsteen. The lyrics are a half-formed scenario that seems to be missing a narrative, a plot twist, or a point. Incidentally, though, they describe a rock star retreating to familiar territory.
[4]

Nortey Dowuona: Sheree Brown got one hit around 1981 that apparently Brandon Flowers heard on his way back from the hospital, thus her turning up to turn out this very good Meat Loaf hit in the bridge. Worth it. 
[8]

Ian Mathers: You just know Brandon Flowers did one of these when he realized just how many manly men would get faraway looks in their eyes at “there are things I would change but it ain’t worth going through,” and I say that with tremendous affection for him and this song. America’s greatest Vegas band has only become more endearing as Flowers continues to animorph into a Springsteen/Elvis hybrid; ramping up the sonic bombast to match (those backing singers!) is a smart move. This is not at all what I thought the Killers would one day sound like when I was blasting the synth hook of “Smile Like You Mean It” at max volume back in the day. But damn it, for a minute there when Flowers insists that he thinks it’s gonna be awright tonight, he makes me believe that he’s right.
[10]

Taylor Alatorre: A [6] if I close my eyes and imagine I’m hearing the Gaslight Anthem at their most fame-hungry and least Catholic-coded; [4] once I glance at the cover art and implode the mirage.
[4]

Mark Sinker: The specifics, basically, of space opera: it didn’t have to real to be evocative and to connect, and outside a narrow span of New Jersey streets you likely had no idea what Springsteen meant, or if it even meant anything. “Fuelie heads and a hurst on the floor,” or whatever the hell it was: this fine and silly Tolkien street-gibberish that could lock you deep into what was very often — for you if not for Bruce — the purest pretend. Wrapped in goofy palatial grandeur, it was just fun and funny to say, and that was such a beginning. I don’t want to begrudge The Killers looking to centre their version of the same trick around Las Vegas — there’s entertainment in the idea and the trying, and even in making it more trashy and plastic and see-thru — but I honestly have no idea what it is I’m meant to be locking into here. It feels quarter-finished. 
[4]

Katherine St. Asaph: The Killers, despite what the nostalgia-account-industrial complex reposts at you, are not universally seen as iconic (as my boyfriend pointed out, bemused, after hearing “Mr. Brightside” at a wedding and being moved to nothing). I will summon Killers icon-nostalgia in apropos situations (e.g., post-tweenage headbanging breaking out at a wedding), but it’s borrowed and not strong. So maybe I’m not the most sympathetic listener when I put this on and hear a band that sounds completely washed. The sequins have fallen to the floor, smudged by shoes, glam only in past.
[3]

Scott Mildenhall: You can’t have your soul sucked by AI if you’re already your own malfunctioning LLM. This is actually what now happens when you prompt Brandon Flowers to “play the Brightside song”. And if you’re asking the question, you may well still be happy with the answer, and the next answer, and the one after that. No wiring has ever been harder or more existentially attached. The Killers know that everything is the same, and everything is different — and that that’s where the joy is.
[7]