Killers denounce haters

Feature by BANG Showbiz | 19 Nov 2008

The Killers don’t like people laughing at the lyrics to their new single.

Frontman Brandon Flowers says he agonised over the band’s latest track ‘Human’ and doesn’t appreciate people’s alternative interpretations of it.

The chorus line to ‘Human’ is “are we human or are we dancer?”, taken from a quote by US journalist Hunter S. Thompson, but some people have misinterpreted it as “are we human or are we denser?”

Brandon, 27, said: “That sucks a bit. I don’t like ‘are we denser?’ I really care what people think but people don’t seem to understand ‘Human’.
“They think it’s nonsense, but I was aching over those lyrics for a very long time to get them right.”

The quote by Hunter S. Thompson which the lyrics reference was a disparaging comment he made about US society, questioning whether the country was raising a generation of humans, or dancers. Brandon also said the Killers’ new album ‘Day and Age’ was inspired by a trip to Panama in Central America.

He added to the Daily Star newspaper: “They still have some indigenous people there and they live 90 per cent of the way they would have done hundreds of years ago. It’s the other 10 per cent that’s bizarre. There’s people living in huts but they have Doritos.”

Brandon also says the inspiration behind new track ‘Spaceman’ came from his spell in Panama. He said: “I was in a playful mood. I went back to our hotel and ‘Spaceman’ came out. I’ve no idea why a song like that should result from that type of trip, but it did.”

‘Day and Age’ is released on Monday (24.11.08).