I was driving the girl home on a Sunday night, we had spent the day together and it was time to take her back to her house. In the vehicle, this catchy song came on the radio, I was trying to listen to the words as the girl was talking to me and looked like I was being attentive to her. Naturally, I made reference to the song, but she was talking about her issues, so nothing I said was going to register.

I was trying to catch key words in the song as I did not know the title, I was pretty sure it was The Killers, but not entirely, it just had that ring to it. Why I wanted the key words was so I could type it into google to find the song. Naturally, I picked up “jealousy” in the chorus, “he is taking off her dress now” and “it started with a kiss” as well as “he takes off her dress now” so that was enough to load some sentences in and start searching. This is an old song, so you think it would be pretty easy to pick. I knew the song, but I never knew the title of the song after all these years. I knew that had to change as I wanted to listen to it when I am working and have YouTube playing in the background.

Nope, nothing, using jealousy as a search word on YouTube was a total failure, the other sentences led me nowhere either. Ok, start again, I still think it had The Killers sound to it, so better to start searching for their songs and see if I get lucky. I just hoped I was tight about the band, I have been wrong plenty of times before, then I overthink it on the trip home and lose the tune in my head. Then I am really annoyed with myself, need to focus, need to keep singing the song in my head, I turned the radio off so I was not distracted.

Even worse, I saw the song in the list and skipped straight over it, because I did not think that was it. I was well aware the song was about infidelity, I didn’t know it happened to Brandon Flowers after he worked out his girlfriend was actually cheating on him as a young guy. The song has some degree of paranoia, he doesn’t want to believe what he knows is true, he is becoming a little obsessive. What is great about the song is that plenty of people have been cheated on, we know the feeling as lived experience, so we get it. That is why the song works, a catchy tune and great guitar intro help of course, add those lyrics and message, Mr Brightside is a sure winner.