Mr. Brightside

About

“Mr. Brightside” is the 2004 debut single released by the American alternative-rock band The Killers. One of their most successful songs to date, its lyrics have inspired several internet memes in 2016, more than a decade after its initial release.

Origin

The Killers released "Mr. Brightside" in 2003 as the first single off their debut album Hot Fuss, then rereleased it in 2004 following the success of their single "Somebody Told Me."^[1] The video for the song, shown below, is actually the second video The Killers made for the track. The first, shown below, became known as the UK version (shown below, left). The more popular alternative take is based off the film Moulin Rouge (shown below, right). As of December 16th, 2016, the video has over 191 million views on Youtube.

Spread

"Mr. Brightside" has been widely critically acclaimed. Rolling Stone called it the 48th-best song of the 21st century. It peaked at #10 on the Billboard charts in 2005. In 2010, Last.fm reported that "Mr. Brightside" was the most downloaded song on the site. In April of 2016, interest in "Mr. Brightside" spiked following a video in which Brian O'Sullivan led a rendition of the song in honor of his deceased friend, Ger Foley. The video, shown below, went viral after The Killers gave it praise.^[5]

Related Memes

Comin' Out Of My Cage

The opening lyrics of the song, "Comin' out of my cage and I've been doing just fine, gotta gotta be down because I want it all," have been applied to various memes. On December 25th, 2016, Tumblr user returnofthejedi^[2] published a post that read "Coming out of my cage and I’ve been doing just :/" and gained over 276,000 notes in a year. The text has also been inserted into various image macros.

On November 29th, 2016, Twitter user @Joshwoos referenced the lyrics in a tweet that has gained over 62,000 retweets.^[3]

It Was Only a Kiss

Another popular joke format related to "Mr. Brightside" finds photographs of awkward kisses accompanied by lyrics from the middle of the first verse of the song, "It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this? It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss!" On December 14th, 2016, Twitter Moments^[4] published a compilation of tweets using the joke.

Search Interest

External References