I Hate Mr. Brightside
It's a great song. We have to stop playing it.
It was August 2nd, 2013, and I was doing just fine. Lying in the grass, buzzed from a few sips of warm vodka I’d taken hours earlier and an abandoned can of beer I picked up off the curb, we waited for the headliner to take the stage. It was the end of the first day of Lollapalooza, a weekend I dreamt about all year, when Grant Park was transformed into a lawless wasteland of music lovers and drunk teenagers from the suburbs.
I wore my tiniest black shorts and my favorite halter crop top from Urban Outfitters. It had elephants on it and I thought it made me look bohemian. This was the same summer I got my nose pierced and replaced the Taylor Swift posters that lined my bedroom walls with The Beatles prints. Taylor was about to take the plunge into pop with “1989” and I had decided I was no longer that kind of girl. I was now a girl who played guitar and listened to Pink Floyd and adopted ‘sarcastic’ as my entire personality.
The kind of girl who convinced her friends to leave behind the DJs at Perry’s stage and go check out a little band called The Killers.
In 2013, The Killers were in the middle of a resurgence. They had been around for the better part of 15 years, but in 2010, news broke that the band was taking a break. This break would only last about a year and half, but nothing makes people want you more than when you go away for a while1. Now, here they were, taking the main stage at Lollapalooza. The band was back together, and we were about to witness history.
My Lollapalooza viewing schedule was a mix of bands I was genuinely interested in, “dubstep” DJs my friends wanted to see that I rolled my eyes at, and shows my brothers said would be cool. Even though I used to scream and cry when they would turn on Wilco’s “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”2, I knew that my brothers were the purveyors of cool music. And they had said The Killers would be a cool show to see.
So there I was, sprawled on a baseball field in Grant Park, as Brandon Flowers and company walked on stage and that unmistakable electric guitar loop ripped through the thick August air.
COMING OUT OF MY CAGE AND I’VE BEEN DOING JUST FINE
We shot up from the grass and took off running towards the stage.
GOTTA GOTTA BE DOWN BECAUSE I WANT IT ALL
I screamed at the top of my lungs.
IT WAS ONLY A KISS, IT WAS ONLY A KISS3
I remember feeling like we had discovered something that night. It was a really good song that we’d all heard before, but not for a while. And that “found” feeling heightened everything. We spent the rest of the show dancing our heads off and crashing into euphoric strangers.
Mr. Brightside became my favorite song. It would pop up occasionally when someone put it on at a house party, and I’d happily be brought back to that perfect August night.
But like a frog in a pot of water that is suddenly boiling, I can’t say when the temperature became unbearable — when, exactly, Mr. Brightside stopped being fun. And now, everywhere you turn, there he is. No room for discovery, because Mr. Brightside never goes away.
And because of this: it’s not good anymore. A song I used to love is now my least favorite of all, barely edging out White Flag by Dido.4
But we can still change things. We can save Mr. Brightside.
All you have to do? Stop playing it.
When people tell me that Mr. Brightside is their favorite song, I can’t help but recoil. Deep down, I am still that 16-year-old girl, terrified of being basic, desperate to be cool and different. So when you openly admit that this incessantly played song is your favorite song ever??? I can’t help but turn up my nose. Have a little tact, for god’s sake.
When, inevitably, I hear that doodle doodle doodle doo guitar riff on the dance floor at a wedding, I do not sprint to the stage. I sprint to the bathroom.
I know, I know. I am an insufferable hater who dislikes things just because other people like them in a way I deem to be too much. But that’s sort of beside the point. Because I’m trying to do everyone a favor. I want you to feel how I felt on that August night in 2013. And that requires restraint.
Mr. Brightside is a good song. There’s no denying that. When it was released in 2003, no one cared about it. When it was re-released in 2004, some people started to care about it, but not enough. It cracked a few top 40 charts in the UK and the US, but it would still be considered a solid “deep cut” for the next 10ish years.
And what makes a song like Mr. Brightside great is bound up in not hearing it very often. You need enough distance from it for the dissonant tones of sadness, defiance, rage, and longing to swirl together into a satisfying belting experience. But when you hear it AT EVERY WEDDING, in EVERY BAR, at EVERY KARAOKE NIGHT, it starts to grate. And we’ve reached 1-877-KARS-4-KIDS levels of overplayed.
Mr. Brightside holds the Guinness World Record for most consecutive weeks on the UK charts for any song, ever. Over EIGHT YEARS charting, as of 2024. It has been played over THREE BILLION TIMES on Spotify, and I feel like I’ve been around for each and every single one. What we need is a worldwide hiatus. A respite. A ceasefire. We need to miss this song in order for it to regain its powers.
So, let’s take a break. Let’s put Mr. Brightside in a time capsule and launch it into space. We will return to it in 40 years, on a warm evening in August, in our best crop tops.
Go ahead, give it one last listen. And then, set it free. It’s the price we have to pay.
this was inspired by marcello hernandez’s comedy special, in which he talks about the strange way men from ohio worship this song.
if you’re still here: annoucement that the next GOOD THINGS SALON will be Thursday, April 30! mark your calendars, topic announced next week.
xo see you next time
free advice
the crashing instruments at the end always gave me such terrible feelings of dread, which makes sense because i was 6 years old listening to this song
pretty sure i kissed a boy i had a crush on this night also, which obviously had a huge bearing on why i liked the song so much
i heard this song once when i was very little and threw up later that day so now it is associated with puke and nausea. it’s also just a really bad song
Put don’t stop believing in the time capsule as well please
2,999,999,999 of those plays were in boy side mansion kitchen