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X-clusive: The Killers On Brits And New Album

added 07 February 2005 at 11.38

Being nominated for Best International Album and Best International Breakthrough Act at this week’s Brit Awards has topped off an impressive year for The Killers. And with a string of sold out shows and a chart topping album under their belts, singer Brandon Flowers seems pleased, but never really had any doubt his band would do so well.

“We’d just heard about our nominations for the Grammy on the American side and we didn’t expect any Brits. For an American band to be nominated is great.” He explained to Xfm.

“But I always thought it [‘Hot Fuss’] would do well. I’m not being cocky, but we had ‘Mr Brightside’ and ‘Somebody Told Me’ while we were still playing in a garage for a year or so and we knew how good they were. We knew it wouldn’t make sense for people not to like it. We felt really confident and we’re really happy to see it all through to here.”

Flowers also ascribes the huge success of the record (which took 34 weeks to actually top the UK album charts) to a lack of fear of big tunes with big choruses.

“There are so many bands out there that are scared of being Number 1,” Flowers continued, “Scared of that happening to them, cos it’s so ‘pop’. But it was never anything we were afraid of, and I think that’s why it happened.  It comes through in our songs. We like big songs and we want people to like the songs. There’s nothing wrong with writing songs that people will like.

“We feel we made a really strong album. It’s not lazy. There are no tracks that we just threw on there. There could be another five singles off that album – and there might well be – and not a lot of bands could do that.”

As for the future, the band are starting to work on translating their UK success to their home county, but their vision for an equally strong second album seems very clear.

“We’re meeting producers and writing new songs right now,” Brandon says, “But we’re only on our second single in America so we have a full two month US tour coming up, then we’re at all the festivals this summer, so we’ll be going strong for the next five months or so.”

“I think it gonna be really similar [to ‘Hot Fuss’] but not to the point where people say it just sounds like ourselves or the B-sides to ‘Hot Fuss’. We’ve grown as a band but we still want to write these big songs. I want people to know where the chorus is and love it. And that’s what we’re striving to do. To get better but still have a pop sensibility.”

Check out the Xfm Online Brits Review for clips from this interview along with reviews, up-to-date betting odds and exclusive performances, videos and Xfm sessions from the bands nominated. Click here. 

 

 

Tagged as The Killers, archive

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