The Killers' "Hot Fuss" 20 Years Later
- 18 minutes read - 3646 wordsMy favorite podcast, “60 Songs that Explain the ’90s,” hosted by Rob Harvilla recently returned. On the show, Rob, a music critic and editor, discusses the significance, great moments, powerful lyrics, and emotional impact of various songs. He truly is a gifted writer about the experience of loving music and loving the making of music. The opening track for his new series covering the 2000’s is The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside.“1
His coverage made me think to the first time I had heard the song in my living room on Rainbow Drive in Mountain View on late-night MTV2 ; I thought about the song’s album, Hot Fuss, playing on my iPod Shuffle at the Gold’s Gym off of 101; and then I realized that the album is now twenty years old. So this is a post about The Killers, the Death of Rock ’n Roll, the 2000’s, and Hot Fuss.
The Death of Rock
Between 1998 and 2002, I don’t really remember any rock music tickling my fancy. While journalistically it’s called “the death” of rock (which is certainly an overstatement) – things were pretty darned moribund. Radiohead’s “Kid A” is far too experimental for that thing that Journey and Ozzy did; Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication” has some rock roots, but it’s not really like AC/DC. Coldplay’s “Parachutes” (not rock) belongs to this era as do Linkin Park’s rap-metal “Meteora” or Deftones’ “White Pony.” It was also the era of U2’s “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.” In that era, myself, I went back to roots or post-punk/Goth music: Old 97’s, Emmylou Harris, Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, the Sisters of Mercy, and Joy Division. Rock simply exited my radar.
It was made worse because “alternative” format radio in the Bay was as likely to play a Train or Michelle Branch song as anything vaguely rock-like. To the extent that there was any rock in my life, it was probably via Greg Kihn’s morning show.
But something started twitching in rock’s dead corpse shortly after the World Trade Center towers fell. The White Stripes “White Blood Cells” and the fabulous LEGO ™ video for “Fell In Love with a Girl” delivered a cardiac paddle Zzzzzap! to rock’s chest.
Close on the heels came NYC’s The Strokes. I remember driving across the Bay Bridge the first time I heard The Strokes’ “Last Night.”
It was the kind of music that made you want to open your windows and yell “Yeaaaaaahhhh!” As I recall, the radio host was so into it, he just played it a second time, and I didn’t mind a bit. And if you’d asked me what I thought they looked like based on that song I would have said “Dunno, Elvis Costello crossed with the MC5?” And goddam. That’s exactly right.
Zzzzzap!
Shortly after, I saw Interpol’s “PDA” on MTV…
and met Meredith Zinner (Nick’s sister) at a French place in Potrero Hill who introduced me to her brother’s band, the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s:
Oh hell yeah, that’s the good stuff. I could hear the EKG pulse of rock’s heart beating again.
Shortly after, I went to Australia and I’ll never forget the day that I was crossing a street in Bondi Junction and a sports car stopped, full of teens, and I could hear the soundtrack to Greek Titans fighting the Aesir guitar solo from White Stripes’ “7 Nation Army.”
I looked at the teens, they looked at me: that American/Australian axis that reveres the AC/DC was alive and well. We were elated to hear rock.
Contemporaneously other bands varying on these themes emerged: The Hives, the Vines, Franz Ferdinand, Muse, etc.
But these bands were grimy, sexy, juicy, horny affairs. You could tell that the hormones and libido and ego could not going to hold them together for very long; these beings were going to burn bright and then fade away…
But in the smoldering ashes of beer-sloshed bar bacchanal on the Lower East Side, a Las Vegas quartet emerged saying that they had the discipline, professionalism, and pop hooks to endure each other and to politely nestle themselves a spot in Top 40 radio amidst the glossy and produced hip-hop and post-Boy-Band-and-or-ex-Disney-Club music heavily in play: The Killers.
Influences
From the NME: “The Killers steal so smartly, and with such mind-boggling variety, that the [sic] demand the most surreal references.” It’s such an apt quote. Harvilla notes that the Mormon singer Brandon Flowers didn’t find Joseph Smith when he encountered his own teen angst, but rather found Hunky-Dory-era David Bowie. The Killers have never been shy about their influences and they share them without self-conscience.
I’m sure I first heard the Killers somewhere on highway 101 and their Blur-like “boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend in February of last year” is an immediate earworm and mental hook. Resolving the first like is something out of Hofstadter, an eternal golden braid of relationship drama.
A later work like “When You Were Young” is the finest Springsteen song ever not recorded by The Boss. It has all of those Springsteen themes of nostalgia, glory days, losing one’s true self as one ages and then a pounding drum tattoo in the final verse that welds in glockenspiel (glockenspiel I tell you!) that’s an echo of Springsteen’s optimistic denouements.
The Album
Rob gives the album as a whole rather short shrift (humorously pointing out that all of the songs outside of tracks 2-5 would be considered amazing for any other band, but for the band that just did tracks 2-5 it’s a let-down). And while I remembered that run being fantastic, I also remembered the album being rather standout as well. So, for the first time in quite a long time, I listened to the whole record all the way through.
“Jenny Was a Friend of Mine”
It’s not the first time I’ll point this out on the record, but the guitar playing in the Killers owes a lot to U2’s the edge. “New Year’s Day” and “Bullet the Blue Sky” are just in their DNA. “Jenny” opens with a moving bass line and an Edge-y guitar riff and relates the story of a police interrogation. “Girlfriend in a Coma” or “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine,” which story would you prefer to hear?
The pre-chorus stands out:
Tell me what you wanna know
Oh, come on, oh, come on, oh, come on
There ain’t no motive for this crime
Jenny was a friend of mine
So come on, oh, come on, oh, come on
Oh, oh, oh
Apparently this song is part of a murder ballad triptych. I had no idea.
It’s definitely a B-team member of this album. It’s nice enough, but we’re about to drop into the froth of one of the most streamed songs ever, and I think the record company knew exactly what they were doing.
“Mr. Brightside”
It’s just a mammoth wallop of a song opening from a music box lullaby of arpeggiated guitar, joined by a loose hi-hat drum, joined by a driving bass line – you know that you’re hearing a hit within the first 15 seconds.
Add in a video which featured a super-colorful band playing sexual tension against Eric Roberts in a pseudo-“Moulin Rouge” homage and you have the potential for video gold.
And it was.
While it’s not my favorite Killers song, it’s the Reverse-Reverse-Skip-Draw 4-atomic bomb on this album.
With verses building to a frenetic break right before the leap into the chorus (with eight solid bass eighth notes signaling the dive):
Jealousy
Turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibi
But it’s just the price I pay
Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
‘Cause I’m Mr. Brightside
I don’t know what each of those words or phrases mean, but in total, like a Seurat painting, it’s the formula for erotic jealousy.
“Smile Like You Mean It”
Now this is my favorite track on this album (probably because of that haunting synth riff that’s (over-) used) in the song. It sounds like R2-D2 attempting to serenade a moisture evaporator and we will hear it a lot.
One aspect that I don’t hear often spoken of as regards the Killers is that they’re funny. They’re even Dad-joke grade punny at times. And in this, as with many other things, they recall the Smiths: “Save some face, you know you’ve only got one.” Compare this to the Smiths and their “Pin and mount me…like a butterfly.”
Actually the whole first verse could have been a Smiths song:
Save some face, you know you’ve only got one
Change your ways while you’re young
Boy, one day you’ll be a man
Oh, girl, he’ll help you understand
Flowers’ singing here, on “Oh, girl” is a wistful, lustful moan that definitely would not sound strange from Morrissey.
The shockingly simple chorus of “Smile like you mean it” merely dances with the whirring synth line. That’s all that’s needed and they know to not tamper with simplicity. The other verses are standout in their longing and nostalgia:
Dreams aren’t what they used to be
Some things slide by so carelessly
This song vividly was in my mind as I read the Las Vegas chapters of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. I could easily imagine Theo and Boris traveling the imploded master-planned community slowly being reclaimed by the desert:
Looking back at sunsets on the East side
We lost track of the time
And I sing along every time with my big chest voice to the bridge:
And someone is calling my name
From the back of the restaurant (really open up on the ‘au’ diphthong)
And someone is playing a game
In the house that I grew up in
And someone will drive her around
Down the same streets that I did
On the same streets that I did
(Titanic bridges are a Killers specialty, BTW. Keep an eye out ahead.)
What a glorious section of modern poetry. What do you say in reply to that but oo-wee-ooooh?
“Somebody Told Me”
It wasn’t 0 times that I heard the opening of this song and thought that I was about to hear Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out.” But then the synths come in and you know that this level of orchestration and glitz could only be the Killers.
And if we weren’t sure whether the Killers had understood what U2’s guitar work was about, this song, this song is a master thesis in slapback strumming guitar so favored by The Edge (See: “New Year’s Day”).
As we approach the chorus, the Killers give us a very disco-like bit of cymbal work that recalls Blondie doing disco in “Heart of Glass” before we run face-first into the brick wall of the Blur-esque character:
Well, somebody told me you had a boyfriend
Who looked like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year
It’s not confidential, I’ve got potential
It’s slick, sexy and funny.
“All These Things That I’ve Done”
This is one of the most controversial songs because of it’s punny bridge,
I’ve got soul, but
I’m not a solider.
As originally done by the Killers, that refrain was a bit maudlin and toed the line on Bono-esque self-importance. But I think it’s kinda OK especially when we consider what the song tells us about its cheesy, gospel roots from the get-go.
The song telegraphs that it’s a hymn from the opening, so I think it’s fair that we might just end up somewhere with some cheese before the thing closes out. We open to ambient sound of space with just a single piano key before we get the invocation:
When there’s nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son?
One more son
If you can, hold on
If you can, hold on, hold on
And again, wordplay isn’t a stranger to the Killers. If you “can hold on, hold on.” The verses give us a man trying to live a holier life, but a man who is also of the world and participating in it. I’ve heard that it’s about Flowers’ conflicted status as a rock star and Mormon, but in my ears I imagine Jack Kerouac trying to find a way to balance between bacchanal and the Mother Mary and zen and realizing that maybe the quest isn’t in his control, but in his surrender, a surrender in prayer that happens to be our chorus:
Help me out, yeah
You know you gotta help me out, yeah
Oh, don’t you put me on the back burner
You know you gotta help me out, yeah
The song has an abrupt break to the “soul”/“soldier”-punny brdige. Harvilla relates that this line can come off as incredibly sanctimonious and indulgent. But! I say that if you buy that the song is a prayer and you ride along with the bridge replete with The Sweet Inspirations gospel voices ratcheting up the pitch on each intonation, you’re left with nowhere to go and that’s my favorite moment of the song. The tension just keeps rising up to stratospheric levels. Then! You’re at the top of the roller coaster hill and the response from the deity receiving the prayer in this hymn is this: “scream and let go, it’s not yours to control, lemme help you out, you’re not on my back-burner.”
You can feel the tears of the penitent. He’s broken through. We’ve broken through with him.
And the scream – that scream! – It’s a gospel scream cracks the pressure like a fissure in a glacier like hasn’t been heard since Pink Floyd’s use of Claire Torry Great Gig in the Sky. For that moment I forgive the hymn its cheesier excesses.
“Andy, You’re a Star”
On this track, per Harvilla, we’re back into average pop music. But the Killers’ average is vastly better than most of their contemporaries. I had always taken this song as queer-coded longing, but current theories hold that Andy was a football player who was nice – outside of high school’s caste structure – to the less socially-adroit Brandon Flowers. He was the football player who never stopped being virtuous and helpful and kind, even to those who weren’t his kind (see, I can do wordplay too!).
It’s a moody soundscape that wouldn’t sound terribly out of place on the Drive soundtrack. I’m a fan.
“On Top”
Speaking of the Drive soundtrack, “On Top” opens with a heavily synth/sequencer introduction that firmly locks us into a post-electroclash soundscape. The song excels in electronic landscape poetry:
The velvet sun that shines on me and you
I can just imagine the infinite scroll lines of a 3-D driving game at a purple-lit arcade in the guts of the Vegas strip.
And while the verse and chorus is enjoyable enough, the Killers yet again put something unbalancing into the bridge. We get a key change and this phrase that takes us out of the midnight, neon quiet on the outskirts of Vegas’ strip into something real, fleshy, and carnal:
And we don’t mean to satisfy tonight
So get your eyes off of my bride tonight
‘Cause I don’t need to satisfy tonight
It’s like a cigarette in the mouth
Or a handshake in the doorway
I look at you and smile because I’m fine.
After this, rich synths ahead of a U2-esque guitar solo are simply beautiful. Harvilla called out this song as being meh, but my god, their meh is pretty damn special.
“Change Your Mind”
It’s jaunty and its fun. It’s got a great synthesizer riff. It’s perfect for running. Much like a Smiths song, there’s a laugh in the refrain:
And if the answer is no
Can I change your mind?
But there are some elements in here that prefigure the Springsteen direction the Killers will explore in their second record, Sam’s Town e.g. there’s a stone-cold piano glissando.
“Believe Me Natalie”
Probably my least favorite track on the album. It indulges a few too many wordplay japes; mixes in horns oddly and really doesn’t connect for me.
“Midnight Show”
This is the yang to the yin of “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.” We open with a moving bass line and Edge-esque strumming. It’s aware of a setting on the edge of a desert, in a car, full of romance and intrigue…and murder? It also features Flowers doing some Morrissey-esque yodel-notes.
It is apparently part 2 of the murder triptych. And that makes sense given what I just said.
It’s a nice enough song and I like it’s Manichean balance to “Jenny…” For reasons of symmetry the album should have ended here.
“Everything Will Be Alright”
…But the Killers have decided to close this album with a coda. Perhaps it’s the mantra to meet the coda from “All These Things That I’ve Done.” It’s a reminder that in the big perspective, our lives are controlled by forces bigger than us that determine when and where we meet a person who takes our breath away. I hear in it the prospect of romantic hope. While “Mr. Brightside” gave us romance as a contributing factor to jealousy, both this and (forthcoming) “Glamorous Indie Rock…” actually have some real cinematic moments of romance in them.
Yet yet yet yet again, the bridge drops the boom on us:
I wasn’t shopping for a doll
To say the least, I thought I’d seen them all
But then you took me by surprise
I’m dreamin’ ‘bout those dreamy eyes
I never knew, I never knew
So take your suitcase, ‘cause I don’t mind
And baby doll, I meant it every time
And you don’t need to compromise
I’m dreamin’ ‘bout those dreamy eyes
I never knew, I never knew
But it’s alright
Alright
There’s wordplay (“doll” a noun, “baby doll” as endearment) and recurrence and playing with syllabic echoes (doll/all). It’s much closer to poetry than we’ve seen elsewhere on the record.
And that’s where my first memories of “Hot Fuss” ended. But then…
BONUS: Glamorous Indie Rock N Roll
My original purchase of this album didn’t have this track. As I recall, I wound up buying it as a single from the iTunes music store. Regardless, I love this song. I love this song because it’s so willing to show its influences and laugh, but it doesn’t lose sight of conveying something genuine and tender amidst it all. On top of all that, it’s funny.
We’re hearing from a love-besotted boy. I don’t think he’s an indie rock boy, but my god, he’s fallen hard for an indie-rock girl. He’s probably thrown his wardrobe in the trash so he can conform to the guys he thinks she likes.
He’s committed a cardinal error of young love: he’s confused loving glamorous indie rock for being besotted by a glamorous indie rock girl, so he’s an unreliable narrator in the sweetest way possible. Is it a plea to her (or to his own delusion) that he proclaims: “Indie rock n roll is what I want…It’s in my soul?” He’s going thrifting with her and looking through magazines. She plays drums and he’s on…tambourine? When the first chorus hits, it hits big like “Creep-“era Radiohead. Big, glorious power chords carry us on the clouds of young love on top of a bold bass line and heavy metal crash-cymbal drumming.
In the second verse, of course, the tambourine kicks in and it’s all over the beat (funny!). Our protagonist is just…not…good. The lyricism turns distinctly Bowie-or-Bolan-esque: “all the boys,” “electric girls” (huh?), he’ll “freak you out.” It’s all pomp and posture. As always with the Killers, the bridge is a cotton-candy-colored dizzy swirl to a glorious apex. But our means of conveyance will be a warm fuzzy Brian May style ascending scale that would be at home in a Queen arena show.
And suddenly in the bridge, the song turns beautifully earnest.
(He’s awful at knowing himself, isn’t it adorable?)
His poor besotted heart is swimming in darkroom developer baths where Ilford photo paper is having crystals of lust crushed in it to attest the lines of desire captured by Leica lenses in his daydreams. The world is sa vie en rouge, a hormonal, yearning, lovesickness of boundless minutes and hyperreal kisses of youth. It’s a gloriously cinematic dream that’s sprouting like a million psychedelic daisies as Flowers sings:
Stay if you want to love me, stay
Oh, don’t be shy, let’s cause a scene
Like lovers do on silver screens
Let’s make it, yeah, we’ll cause a scene
There’s a wonderful ritartando across the bridge that comes to a held fermata of silence. The dreamed kiss ends; he opens his eyes in the here and now in an afternoon sunlight dappled thrift store and says his solemn vow: “It’s indie rock-n-roll for me.”
There’s a reprise of the second verse which is out of the big, wonderful glam beauty of “Slider-“era T.Rex. Flowers works reprises of the first verse as the crashing cymbals run his voice ragged and a wonderful loud bass talks us down off of the hormone high.
I just love the joke, I love the emotions, I love the surprise turn to earnestness. And I love it because in 1996-7, I was besotted with a fabulous Indie Rock N Roll shop girl. And this song is what that felt like: the folly and the ecstasy.
Conclusion
And that’s looking back at Hot Fuss, a milestone moment that ended the discussion of whether rock was dead. It clearly wasn’t.
Footnotes
- The new show is cheekily named “60 Songs that “Explain the
90’s: The 2000’s.” This is the kind of nonsensical naming to preserve
franchise mindshare is just the sort of
#latestagecapitalisminsanity I can get behind – if only for the Dada response to it that comes soon afterward. - Sigh, yes when MTV still played videos, albeit “concerning-for-your-health very late at night.”