Brandon Flowers: Is fame worth it? I’m not sure anymore
By Mark Savage
Brandon Flowers has a confession. For the last 25 years, he’s been the frontman of The Killers, channelling his love of stadium rock and British new wave on songs like Mr Brightside, When You Were Young, and Human. But beneath that shimmering synth-pop exterior lies an alternative soundtrack—a country addiction developed in his childhood.
"You know, a lot of guys in my line of business develop drug addictions," he says. "I got a country addiction."
It began in Nephi, Utah, where his dad would play Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and John Conlee on the car stereo. School dances held at the local golf club always featured country and western slow dances. So when Flowers moved back home and started revisiting his childhood haunts, his passion for country was rekindled.
You can hear the results on his third solo album, Thrasher, recorded in Nashville’s famed RCA Studio A—home to Dolly Parton’s Jolene and I Will Always Love You—with a group of veteran musicians including pedal steel legend Bruce Bouton, 85-year-old harmonica player Charlie McCoy, and Americana musician Margo Price.
"I sang live with them, and I think they really appreciated that, because it’s a very romantic way of doing it," he says. "It’s not something that people do anymore. To actually get that energy down on tape is a different thing."
Thrasher is an album Flowers couldn’t have made in his 20s. Once saying his "experiences weren’t interesting enough" to be turned into lyrics, now he’s excavating his diary to write about his rural upbringing and experiences of working in Las Vegas casinos. There’s also a tribute to his brother-in-law who died suddenly several years ago, and on Miss America, a critique of the opioid crisis that hit his hometown.
"It’s kind of staggering. Such a dirty business," he says of the epidemic.
The album also explores Flowers’ own life. On American Dream, he fantasises about meeting Elvis Presley (in a flying Tesla, no less) and asking him whether fame and fortune is all it’s cracked up to be. Elvis just laughs—but it’s a question that has plagued Flowers for years.
"Sometimes I wonder, what am I trying to achieve, and what am I trying to prove, and who am I trying to prove it to, and what have I gotten from it?" he says. The song came from a conversation he had with his three teenage sons, "because I worry about them comparing themselves to my success."
Flowers has always been careful to isolate his family from the effects of fame. "We don’t talk about it much," he says. "There’s no gold records hanging in the bathroom or anything like that." And he emphasises that success doesn’t automatically bring contentment.
"My dad didn’t have that, but is he less happy than me? He may even be more happy than I am." He reflects on his father’s life: "He made $25,000 a year…
