A Killer Selection
One morning last month a Washington Post headline caught my eye:
“‘Mr. Brightside’ Became a Millennial Anthem — Then Set a World Record”
The article began by noting that when the American band The Killers broke into that song at London’s O2 Arena after England beat the Netherlands in this year’s European Championship semifinals, the crowd, in the words of one 37-year-old fan, went “absolutely mental.”
This illustrated “Mr. Brightside”’s staying power as a “generational anthem” for those born in the 1980s and 1990s, wrote Post reporter Kelsey Baker. On that same day last month, she recounted, the song set a Guinness World Record by reaching 416 weeks — about eight years — in the top 100 of the United Kingdom’s Official Singles Chart.
And it’s not just Millennials. Even his 18- and 19-year-old students know every word of “Mr. Brightside,” Washington State University music professor A.J. Miller told the newspaper.
That tracks. When I Googled Kelsey Baker, I learned that she is in fact a college student who’s a summer intern at the Post.
So, if you are a geezer like me — as seems likely, given that I know most of you personally — you likely are impatient at this point for the link to “Mr. Brightside.” Because you want to answer for yourself the question that I asked when I read that headline. Namely, “Have I ever even heard this song that the Washington Post says is a staple at Millennial Major Life Events such as weddings?”
Wonder no longer. Give it a listen here.
What I found — to my relief as a Baby Boomer who fears ossification but finds it bloody impossible to Keep Up — is that I do know the song. Not only that, I agree that it’s “banger,” as its British fans say.
“Mr. Brightside” is a propulsive number about a guy who’s being cheated on by his girlfriend. The wronged dude visualizes every agonizing step of the foreplay and coitus. Importantly, though, he’s able to power past it. He refuses to let the cheater bring him down. Thus, he is Mr. Brightside — two words I’d never caught, somehow, in the many times I’d heard the song on DC 101 or streaming radio stations. Which was why I hadn’t known that I know the song.
Having established that, my next question was “Weddings? Really?!”
“Mr. Brightside” does not strike me as being a lifetime commitment-friendly tune. I mean, you wouldn’t want it to replace “Here Comes the Bride,” would you? Not with lyrics like “She’s touching his chest now/He takes off her dress now/Let me go/And I just can’t look/It’s killing me.” You’d only slip that particular piece of sheet music to the church organist — a la Bart Simpson with his Iron Butterfly-influenced “In the Garden of Eden” — if you then planned to forego the quaint reciprocal-feeding ritual during the reception in favor of ramming the entire wedding cake down your bride’s gagging throat.
Spun by a DJ during the afterparty, though? Why not? Sure, “Mr. Brightside” remains markedly off-message — but so, arguably, are such traditional wedding-reception favorites as the dance-instructional “Do the Funky Chicken” and “Electric Boogie” (aka “The Electric Slide”). Those songs have nothing to do with matrimony — save, perhaps, the idea of working in unison. When the prevailing calculus is simply audience participation, “Mr. Brightside” clearly delivers.
“It’s got a really driving pulse,” Miller notes. The lyrics are simple and repetitive.”
And never mind that the cheating thing looms as a potential downer. As Steve Waksman, a music professor at Smith College, told the Post, “Mr. Brightside”’s mixture of devastation and defiance “is almost like an antidote to its own bad feelings.”
Killers front man and “Mr. Brightside” co-writer Brandon Flowers, for his part, has said that the band never tires of playing the “infectious” song.
I’ve been asking myself if any song from my 20s or 30s strikes me as a “generational anthem” in the way that, say, Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” arguably was for those who came of age in the 1960s. Maybe The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” with its jaded declaration that the new boss is the same as the old boss?
It’s interesting to me that Millennials have a musical touchstone at all, even one that’s about the beat rather than the message. By the beginning of this century our common musical language was splintering. Audio platforms were multiplying. People were leaving what was left of the mainstream to head down their preferred rabbit holes. While there are exceptions to that today such as Taylor Swift — whose music seems to unite women across generations — one wonders what songs, if any, will have the power to bring together future legions of sports fans, bar patrons and wedding guests.
At least I won’t be completely out of the cultural-relevance loop for as long as “Mr. Brightside” retains its grip. But even that hold, I know, is tenuous.
I’m thinking of the passage in the Post article where a 30-something social media commentator named Peter West observed that “Mr. Brightside” is “among a handful [of songs] that flip a switch for Millennials — along with ‘Get Low’ by Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz and ‘Yeah!’ by Usher.”
That prompted me to give those other songs a listen. I draw a complete blank on “Get Low.” The internet tells me that this song from 2002 was “a breakthrough song for the crunk genre.” Per the website Songfacts, it’s about “going to a club, getting really drunk and watching women dance suggestively for your delight.” The singer notes more than once that sweat is dripping from his testicles. (Tellingly, “An AI overview is not available for this search.”)
Usher’s “Yeah!” is slightly familiar to me. Well. The music. Not the words. And I’d had no idea that it was an Usher song.
As for the lyrics to the 2004 song, “This one is set in the club, where Usher is spending time with his homies,” Songfacts summarizes. “He has a girlfriend, but she’s not there, so a lady steps in to seduce him. Throughout the song, Usher is trying to decide just how far to let this go. Every time he tries to take the moral high ground and behave himself, he’s overruled by a much louder voice that says ‘Yeah!’”
In the Washington Post article, Peter West doesn’t say whether “Get Low” or “Yeah!” are now staples at wedding receptions, too. If I were a Millennial bride, though, I might want to go over the DJ’s set list ahead of time and look for anthemic threads. Maybe consider subbing some innocuous Boomer rockers. For the moms and dads in the crowd. You know, the ones who are still married after all these years.
