The Enduring Appeal of “Mr. Brightside”For roughly two weeks toward the end of this coming August, The Killers will be planting stakes in their hometown of Las Vegas for a condensed residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Announced at the beginning of the year as a means of celebrating the 20th anniversary of the band’s breakthrough debut Hot Fuss, the shows will feature the group performing the album from start to finish for the first time. While those able to land tickets to these exclusive shows will undoubtedly look forward to hearing beloved tracks such as “Somebody Told Me” and “All These Things That I’ve Done,” in their original sequence, it will be early on in the band’s set — somewhere around the four-minute mark — that the audience will erupt perhaps to its loudest levels of enthusiasm, triggered by Dave Keuning’s now infamous arpeggio-ed riff for “Mr. Brightside.” Twenty years after the fact, “Mr. Brightside” remains one of those songs, a piece of pop music with a staying power — if not outright growth in popularity — that seems inexplicable and yet entirely warranted. |