Originally posted by LikeASong[..]
I might be repeating myself on this, but I'd kind of agree with your statement IF Hot Fuss included When You Were Young.
That is a very good song. They have a few gems here and there on the three albums that aren't Hot Fuss, but I have a huge fear that The Killers will suffer from what I like to call Pearl Jam syndrome, which is when a band just can't seem to top their debut album, ever. Hot Fuss is a masterpiece in my opinion, it deserves to be on some kind of "best of the past 10 years" list, in the top 10, or even top 3. Maybe I put it on too much of a pedestal when comparing it to their other work, but it just seems like they're losing their fire the longer they go on. Sam's Town was great, I love When You Were Young, Read My Mind, Bones, Bling (although this is where my distain for their lyrics started - this song makes absolutely no sense to me lyrically) and Day and Age, great musically, suffers from the same problems that began on Sam's Town. THE LYRICS MAKE NO SENSE. "I heard you found a wishing well, in the city". "The Devil's wrapping up his hands, he's getting ready for the showdown". (Wtf?) The album has great ideas, songs like Neon Tiger or The World We Live In, but they fall flat with random and grand metaphors that just go past me. Again, if somone can provide me with a list of legitimate song and lyric meanings in their work, I'd be HUGELY appreciative, but I just can't see it.
It's funny, because I'm reading U2byU2 again right now, and one of the things that Bono is struggling with lyric-wise in the early days was that he wanted their lyrics to mean something, and that people could understand and relate to, but he struggled with being able to do it. Every other early new wave band were writing lyrics that were hugely interpretive or just didn't make any sense, or didn't mean anything at all, and they didn't want to be a part of that. I'm not saying The Killers should be more like U2 or anything, but they could learn from that. Bono's lyrics in their early career are pretty much the opposite of Brandon's, look where U2 are now. Maybe that's a huge stretch (I'm sure it is) but still, I think one of the biggest reasons that The Killers "fell off" after Hot Fuss was not only because they strayed from their initial sound too quickly, but because their lyrics took a drastic change. Hot Fuss had some weird lyrics (Somebody Told Me) but at least they made sense and could be understood. What happened to lyrics like "The day is breakin', and it's clear, your body's shakin', and it's clear, you really need it, so let go, and let me feed it, but you know". Great lyrics. Or "You got a real short skirt, I wanna look up, look up, yeah yeah". Can't get more straight forward than that. My question is what happened after that? It's like Brandon read a bunch of fantasy novels and Dr. Suess books and started getting inspired for his lyrics based on those. BRING IT BACK TO EARTH MAN! Lyrics aren't important to a lot of people, but to those of us that they are, it's killing me!
