For the past 24 years, The Killers have been leading voices in modern American rock music. In the early 2000s, the band put out their beloved album, Hot Fuss, and the synthy album became the soundtrack of '90s babies' teenage years as they collectively navigated inner turmoil and angst. "Mr. Brightside" remains one of the most recognizable songs in the world, and is the kind of song that requires you to roll down all of your windows and scream along.
That era of The Killers, though, is firmly in the rear mirror. As the years have progressed since Hot Fuss' release, the band's original sound has gradually faded away. Nostalgia drew committed relistens to their early albums, but the band has evolved and earned a new audience of fans. And when they released the single "Your Side of Town" in 2023, it seemed The Killers were going back to their roots, but it quickly became clear that this was ultimately too good to be true.
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In August 2023, "Your Side Of Town" was released, and was reminiscent of the synth pop vibe The Killers built their name on. It had the same hint of disco, but maintained the moody energy of their 2000s albums. In truth, it had been years since the group released a track that sounded anything like this. They'd moved on musically, and the new song seemed to harken back to something long ed.
Two years prior, The Killers released Pressure Machine, a far more personal and, let's it it here, creatively challenging project. The tracks on that album were often punctuated by tapes of interviews that reflect Brandon Flowers' upbringing in a small city in Utah, Nephi, and despite the presence of some synths, the songs are an undeniably different style. And it was undeniable, the Americana concept album sounded absolutely nothing like the angsty pop style of Hot Fuss and Sam's Town.
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The release of "Your Side of Town" was promising: maybe the band would bring back their original sound... However, the dream crumbled when it was announced that the band would not be going forward with the rest of the album. Brandon Flowers told the New York Times, he got halfway through recording the new LP when he realized that he was incapable of continuing. Flowers told The Sunday Times that he and Ronnie Vannucci Jr were in the midst of working with producers Stuart Price and Shawn Everett, when the epiphany hit:
"Halfway through recording I realized, ‘I can’t do this.' This isn’t the kind of record... I don’t think you’ll see us making this type of music any more.”
Of the scrapped songlist, we know that 3 tracks had already been completed, because they were repackaged as new, original songs for 2023's greatest hits compilation, Rebel Diamonds. Alongside "Your Side Of Town", work had already been completed on "Boy" (which was released as a single in 2022) and "Spirit".
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Brandon Flowers has a deep love for fans of The Killers and what he has been able to create with the group, but he also has a deep ion for the music he has been making. Inside of Flowers there was clearly somemething of a creative war: the call of whether to satisfy fans or satisfy himself artistically. Ultimately, the latter won, as Flowers decided he didn't want to be making songs like he had in the early days of the band:
I’m as proud of Hot Fuss as you can be for something you did when you were 20, but I’m not 20. So I’m thinking about the next phase of my life. It is a conflict. It is just, well, at what point do I make that change? Who in the band wants to do that too?
No matter what, there will always be people who look at me and just think of Somebody Told Me. And I get that. But I’m interested in evolving.
Flowers expressed that he was really proud of the work that he did on Pressure Machine, and is now more drawn to the sound that the band had been building as they matured from their 20s into their 40s. Not only did the 2021 album have a sound that he loved, it brought out a side of him as a musician that he felt he had been searching for. For Flowers, Pressure Machine was deeply personal, and that's clearly what we can expect more of in the future. He expressed that despite his effort to go back to the sound that so many fans yearn for, The Killers will not be making music like this in the future.
Sources: The Sunday Times