Looking on the Bright Side

“Mr. Brightside” by The Killers is an anomaly.

As far as songs go, it’s not particularly remarkable. It has a standard, familiar British-pop cadence. The music theory behind the song is at a middle school level. The guitar arrangement is within the grasp of any 12-year-old who practices.

Despite the fact that their frontman Brandon Flowers is a world class singer with a huge range, this particular vocal line is within reach of any decent karaoke star. Even the lyrics, while meaningful if you’re in a particular mood or phase of life, are repetitive and not terribly profound.

But its legacy is remarkable.

It has been on the UK Singles Top 100 at least once per year for 16 years, spending a total of 209 weeks on the Top 100 including a run of 35 consecutive weeks.

If this were a music analysis blog, we’d dig into what it is about this song that makes it so enduring.

But instead, I’d like to explore how it began.

Opportunity doesn’t knock…

Near the end of 2001 Brandon Flowers was an aspiring musician working as a waiter in Las Vegas. One day he picked up a free magazine called Las Vegas Weekly where musicians would put “wanted” ads to fill open slots in their bands.

One ad caught his eye. A guitar player named Dave Keuning was searching for everyone: vocals, bass, drums, keys. Brandon called Keuning, who gave him a demo tape of five songs and, on their first rehearsal, they decided to work on the demo that would become “Mr. Brightside.”

During their 2009 filmed concert at Royal Albert Hall, Flowers said this of their fateful meeting:

“I liked his influences. I liked the bands that he liked, so I gave him a call. It was very exciting, because you never knew who was going to open the door when you knocked.”

“Mr. Brightside” was the first song they wrote together as a band, the lead single off their debut album, and nearly 20 years later one of the most consistently successful songs of all time.

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…People do

It would be easy to chalk this story up to dumb luck, like so many other famous stories of chance encounters.

• What were the odds Gene Simmons of KISS was in the club that day Dave, Mike, Alex and Eddie Van Halen were on stage?
• What were the odds Steve Jobs would be introduced to Steve Wozniak via a mutual friend?
• What were the odds Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would meet on a street corner?

I don’t know. But it wasn’t the odds that lead to “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Unchained,” or “Jump.” It wasn’t the odds that led to the Macintosh, the iPod, and the iPhone. It wasn’t the odds that led to the revolution in women’s rights.

It was the action and initiative taken by the people involved in those chance encounters. If any one of those people had decided they didn’t feel like having a conversation that day, or they didn’t think the other person was worth their time, or they themselves weren’t worthy of the opportunity, no amount of luck in the world would have made a difference.

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Making the Most of Every Interaction

Crucially, none of them knew they were having a world-changing chance encounter when it happened (except maybe Van Halen because, of course, Gene Simmons was pretty famous). But the Steves? They were just kids. Cady and Susan? They were strong, independent women having a casual conversation.

Brandon Flowers was a waiter looking for a way out. He could have talked himself out of calling and said, “I’m just a waiter, and that’s all I’ll ever be.” But he took the risk. He reached out. He made an effort. And this time the universe rewarded him with opportunity. Not a guarantee, but a chance.

I’ll keep saying it: You have no idea what kind of opportunities await you just on the other side of that next connection. You can wait your entire life for opportunity to knock. Or you can choose to knock on every door.

It was right there in Brandon’s lyrics all along:

Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
‘Cause I’m Mr. Brightside

I’ve heard the song called a panic attack in musical form. In some ways, it is. But I think it’s the cautious optimism in these three lines that keeps people coming back. If you believe, genuinely believe, that every new person you meet is destiny calling, you’ll approach those interactions differently than you would a passing transaction. And in doing so, you start to make your own luck.

That’s looking on the bright side.