“Mr. Brightside” by The Killers

"Mr. Brightside" was one of the very first songs the Killers ever wrote, and it went out as their debut single on September 29, 2003, before landing on their debut album Hot Fuss in 2004. Brandon Flowers wrote the words and Dave Keuning the music, the band produced it with Jeff Saltzman, who also recorded it, and Mark Needham mixed it into a breathless, glittering rush: a riff that won't stop spinning and a singer who sounds like he's been awake all night.

It did better the second time around, when a 2004 re-release reached the top 10 in both the US and the UK. Two videos were made, one a black-and-white clip of the band playing in an empty room, the other modeled on the film Moulin Rouge!.

Then it simply refused to leave. It's the Killers' biggest seller in the US, past 3.5 million copies, and in Britain it has logged more than 500 weeks on the singles chart, the longest run ever. Rolling Stone ranked it the 48th best song of the 2000s, and later placed it at 378 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.