Brandon Flowers (The Killers)

0:08One hair blowing in the summer wind The blue-eyed girl playing in the sand Hey, it's Matt with MSN.CA, Brandon Flowers from The Killers here. How you doing, man? Pretty good. Yeah, the new records out. It must be nice to have it out for people to hear now. It is. There's no going back. And that's actually a beautiful thing. Because you can baby it and cuddle it and overdo it, and it's just done now. Are you like that in the songwriting process? Are you really like scratch out words, redo, redo, redo? Or do you just let it come out and that's what we see? No, no, no, there's a lot of reworking. We reworked a song like, a matter of time. I mean, it's been through so many different configurations and I just hope we pick the right one. So I wonder for a band at your level now, Four Records Deep, how do you choose what to play?

0:57It's cool. Luckily enough, we have an understanding with fans. A song like Jenny was a friend of mine. It just goes off like a hit, even though it wasn't. Or a song like Dustland Fairy Tale has just grown with people and become so much bigger than it could have been, even if it was on the radio all the time. You know, there's something special about it. Are these songs you play every night? Or does the set change from night to night? Or will it, I guess, on this tour when you're back in Toronto December 15th? We have four albums in now, so we have a lot and we can mix it up, but we're going to have to start figuring that out quick because we got a lot of these new songs and we want to play them.

1:48Let's talk about the new songs. Runaways I hear is the one that started this record going. Pretty much. But I heard it was also written like years ago, after a show that maybe didn't go so well or something like that. Yeah, well it's, I struggle. I struggle with an identity, I don't know because I love so many different types of music. We were having this huge amount of success with human and with our last record and going to new countries and went from playing to 1200 if we're lucky in Madrid to 15,000. It was just blowing up. And then I write this song Runaways and it's nothing like human.

2:34It's a totally different genre and it's confusing. It will mess with your head. It's confusing to you. It eventually becomes confusing to the fans. But it's, you know, I just have different stuff that I listen to and it comes out at different times. And so that ended up being the launching pad for this record. And then what came next? When you say launching pad, so everyone's in the studio, things are going on so well. A song like Battleborn is a brother, you know, to Runaways. And it's how you start seeing a thread and things start falling into place. Because I've heard you say that Runaways and an atomic bomb are the backbone of the record.

3:21So what do you mean by that? Well, you're looking for some pillars for the record. You know, you need those. What do you mean by that pillar? Yeah, the stability and foundations and you need, you got to have those. Not to say that the other ones are filler. This is the strongest record we've made. And I'm not just saying that for you to buy it. We've had some great songs on past records, but this is a, I'm trying not to cuss. This is a freaking great record. And I'm really proud of it. Well, there's even a country song on there. Which one is country song to you? From here on with the slide guitar. From here on out. That's a very song. But it's got more country feel and a 50s feel than I think anything I've heard from you guys.

4:07Yeah. Who came in with that idea? I think I did. Do you come up? No, you don't come up with everything. It must be a lot of good stuff. But it was Dave that came up with the steel, steel, the slide guitar. And, but it already was, you know, it was already headed down that dusty road. Yeah. I have quick questions. One more dancers. Okay. Road. Landon or McCartney. Landon. When you hear a song what usually hits you first. Liric's melody or rhythm. Melody. Song you've written your most proud of. A dust line, very tall. That came really quick. And in one word, the killers. No.

4:54Neon.