It’s not every day that a band can claim to have not one, but two Guinness World Records. Earlier this week, The Killers were presented with the awards for the success of their 2003 anthem Mr Brightside, which has been sitting in the charts for more amount of time than any other song in history.
Love them or hate them, the Las Vegas indie rockers certainly have the magic touch when it comes to producing timeless tunes. “It’s infectious still to us,” says frontman Brandon Flowers, speaking of the floor-filling track. “I know some people can’t wrap their head around it, but you’ll see the response [when you see it live].”
The response to the song at The Killers’ final show of their 6-date London occupancy of the O2 Arena is unsurprisingly earth-shaking, as the packed-out floor jumps in one large, hollering mass. But, it’s not just Mr Brightside that has the venue bursting at its seams; far from it, with the night serving as a stellar showcase of their 2023 career-spanning greatest hits album, Rebel Diamonds.
Tonight’s setlist is wall-to-wall absolute bangers, including Human, Somebody Told Me, For Reasons Unknown, Runaways, Read My Mind and so on, but The Killers have so many classics that the sheer volume of them have been spread out across practically a week’s worth of (almost fully) sold-out performances, with each night presenting a roulette of their much-loved catalogue.
It’s a meticulously-executed Las Vegas-style residency that’s as glitz and glam as the real thing, with the venue itself taking on the form of a casino, a gaudy geometric carpet wrapping the stage and card diamonds bejewelling its sides. As the band make their entrance, chiffon curtains open to reveal a looming screen that either gives Flowers plenty of well-appreciated close-ups, or presents stunning vistas of starlit deserts and the luminous Las Vegas strip. Later, a multilayered chandelier hovers down from the ceiling.
As ever, Flowers teeters on the side of arrogance, but it’s all in good fun, his perfect teeth glistening as he shouts in his Nevada drawl: “I heard you ordered a good time? Coming right up!”, before joking how he felt uncomfortable hearing the audience back from his dressing room during Travis’ support slot give so much enthusiastic support to a band that wasn’t his own.
Donning a ruby-red designer suit - as guitarist Dave Keuning sports sequins and a Vivienne Westwood necklace - Flowers is so pristine that he almost could be mistaken for a celebrity wax figure, though he breaks the illusion early on, instantly dripping in sweat with endless sprints across the stage.
The fact that this is the final night of a six-day residency - tonight’s performance added due to demand - and there’s not a hint of tiredness from anyone in the Killers camp is remarkable. If anything, Flowers seems to be exorcising every ounce of vitality he has left. During All These Things That I’ve Done, he almost falls over from singing so forcefully, before hiking up the energy to such a chaotic crescendo that it feels like he’s about to break out into Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas. Flowers is consistently all-in, lapping up every moment and revelling in the celebratory air; this room of dancing, love-filled people is all for him, the band he’s led and the legacy he’s created. Strangely, he doesn’t even appear to be wearing protective ear-pieces - he wants to hear every moment in its full, deafening glory.
The Killers may not be the edgiest, nor conventionally ‘coolest’ band in the rock pantheon, but they’re stars in every sense of the word, ones clearly born to do what they do by their unrivalled level of glamorous showmanship, and it’s a wonder to see. They might be beyond their peak at this point, but just like Mr Brightside, they’re not ready to drop from how high they’ve climbed.
