He may be the nicest rockstar in a blazer, but Brandon Flowers is low-key hoarding heartbreak and bangers in his basement. The Killers frontman caught up with Kyle Meredith to talk about Your Side of Town, Rebel Diamonds, and how he’s maybe, probably, secretly making a solo record that sounds like a pressure cooker full of Pressure Machine.
“It’s kind of a nod to a lot of the music that influenced me as a teenager,” he says of the shimmering new track. “We hadn’t made music like that since Day & Age.” He’s back with Stuart Price and some vintage melancholy, but don't expect lazy nostalgia. “I try not to dumb it down,” Flowers says. “I’m trying, man. I’m trying over here.”
Turns out Your Side of Town came from an abandoned EP that got cannibalized for the band’s 20-year retrospective. “There was going to be a tug-of-war,” he shrugs. The label wanted the hits. Flowers wanted to finish what they started. So the compromise was a few new songs, five or six tracks from the band’s late-period deep cuts, and some reshuffled classics (“We didn’t put ‘Jenny Was a Friend of Mine’ on. We had to play around a little bit.”)
And if you think there's a dusty hard drive somewhere with the Holy Grail of lost Killers tracks, well, you’re not wrong. “The vault is deep,” he admits. “We might kick ourselves over two or three we didn’t finish, but overall, I think we’ve been pretty consistent.”
The deeper question isn’t what’s in the vault—it’s who’s standing guard. For Flowers, his once-idolized North Stars have shifted dramatically. “There was always a little bit of darkness in the people I idolized at first. Debauchery. Heathenism,” he says. “And that is so far from who I am.” In his mid-20s, an unexpected musical reawakening hit—this time led by Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen. “These voices sounded familiar to me, even though I couldn’t believe I was starting to love it,” he says. “But it allowed me to tell stories and be more true to myself.”
That storytelling took center stage on Pressure Machine, the Killers' bleakest, most poignant album—and the one Flowers says let him finally stretch out. “Three verses. Four verses. You don’t typically hear that in a pop song,” he says. “But I didn’t realize how much those characters were bursting to get out.”
But Flowers isn’t just lurking in those characters—sometimes he’s swapping life stories about them with Eddie Vedder. The two recently reconnected after twenty years apart, picking up their last conversation exactly where it left off: Kenny Rogers. “I had just met Eddie and was telling him about ‘Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,’” Flowers recalls. “He’d never heard it. Then this time, he goes, ‘I went home and looked it up.’” Full circle. Sad country songs, alt-rock icons, and a Vegas kid who’s still very much figuring it all out—Brandon Flowers remains the most emotionally available arena rock star in a 3-piece suit.
Religion, redemption, and sad characters trying not to disappear—sounds like a solo album in the works? “It could end up being one,” Flowers says, cautious. “It’s definitely occupying the same region as Pressure Machine.”
That region is apparently nowhere near the arena-anthem bombast of “The Man,” but hey, even that swagger was a mask. “I thought I was supposed to have that persona. But it wasn’t me,” he says. “I’m slowly becoming myself.”
Which might be why, 20 years in, Brandon Flowers is still writing like he’s got something to prove. Just don’t ask him to play Lonely Town with The Killers. “It’s a touchy subject,” he laughs. “But I miss playing it.”
Listen the interview above and then check out the video below.