Brandon Flowers, frontman of The Killers, told The Times this week that he’s been questioning whether to quit music altogether — comments that arrive just weeks before his solo album Thrasher drops Aug. 21.
“I’m really going through it right now: how much longer do I want to do this, what does it mean, why am I doing it anyway?” Flowers said. He also noted that the grind has taken a physical toll: “Whenever I finish a tour, without fail I get sick.”
The admission comes from an unexpected vantage point. Flowers formed The Killers in Las Vegas in 2001, and “Mr. Brightside” — off their debut Hot Fuss — has since logged more consecutive weeks on the UK charts than any song in history. He’s not someone interested in rebuilding a career; he’s someone questioning one at its peak.
In the same interview, Flowers said he finds himself thinking about his father, who “goes to yard sales, where he buys frames to take home and paint. He’s never had any money in his life and he’s happier than I am.” He also said he thinks about Mick Jagger, still performing at 83, and asks himself: “What keeps him getting up on that stage?”
“I guess it’s because there are powerful moments in a concert,” Flowers speculated. “How could I not want to do that?”
This isn’t the first time Flowers has spoken publicly about a reckoning. In 2023, he told The Times he was in a “crisis” over The Killers’ direction, ultimately scrapping an album that didn’t feel “authentic.” Thrasher, recorded in Nashville and rooted in the country music of his Utah childhood, seems to be where he landed after that.
