The Killers - Hot Fuss

Target splurged on some anniversary editions, huh? Ok, eventually I'll get real pretentious and a/b the 55th anniversary remix of the posthumous Beatles album Abbey Road with my original, but tonight I just want to enjoy the debut album Hot Fuss by The Killers.

The Killers of course have the distinction of hands down lifetime winner of best Christmas album, building a complete concept album about Santa trying to kill Brandon one holiday single/video per year, but who doesn't like Mr. Brightside?

No lyric sheet, but you can easily understand all the words, so that doesn't really matter. What does matter are those quacking bass lines and synth leads. Fabulous.

Fun fact, the album actually contains multiple demo recordings because they literally scrapped every song they were working on except Mr. Brightside after hearing Is This It by The Strokes. I already told you how that album completely changed the world of Alternative Rock, and this album is literal proof. I'd actually suffer hanging out in a crappy bar if this is what the band is playing. 

Most people like to think it's an album about a guy who murders his girlfriend after realizing he's gay. I'm a Barthes scholar, if it's capable of being interpreted that way then that's what it means for you. The thing about interpretation is that without a clearly stated context, the interpreter has to put the chronicological unfolding into one for themselves. I won't go so far as Kristeva to say that intertextuality is a mandatory component of all interpretation, i'd call that meta-text, but there's no law that says you can't use that one non-album single to corroborate your interpretation of the album. I will however adamantly disregard wanton intertextual intrusion into the work. The text lies at a higher abstract level than the work, and unless you're deliberately playing with that boundary the result is intellectually sloppy at best, blatantly obvious propaganda at worst. 

Anywho, I think it's just a collection of songs about everybody being with the wrong boyfriend who looks like a girlfriend Mr. Brightside had in February of last year. 

Should we unpack the proairesis? 

1) there's a narrator telling a story about a fight between himself (standard cis-het pronoun assumption, i'll change it if there's some later indication that Brandon is singing as a female character) and Jenny. He's telling this story to someone, but telling it as though he's being interrogated. "This crime," "i know my rights," "i'm telling the truth," etc. Yay, ambiguous love triangles. But, this rhetorical device is broken with the line "then you whisper in my ear...." How do we interpret that structural switch from Jenny as subject, to "you" the interrogator (we can keep this 3rd character on paper if we want, but you the listener are the literal interrogator to whom he is telling this story because that's the actual narrative context)? The final repeat of the chorus then is not said by the narrator, but rather by us. We've flipped the whole thing around, telling the narrator we know why he's here, there's no motive, Jenny was our friend too (wink). 

Thus, we are left with an interpretationally open tension. Has Jenny been murdered? Is one or both characters cheating on Jenny? We pointedly don't know, this is the first song of the album, and we should logically expect the ensuing album to provide some sort of answer; not some intertextual hallway, but the actual exposition of the work entitled Hot Fuss. Think of it like we're Scott Bakula and we just quantum leaped into a totally confusing conversation with Brandon Flowers, because that's how actual intertextuality works. I can't interpret Hot Fuss without my knowledge of Quantum Leap telling me I have to figure out what the hell is going on. Too bad Al and Ziggy aren't here to help me out.

2) three cheers for self-deprecating sarcasm! Mr. Brightside is logically the narrator from the first song, and now we get to hear his inner monologue. Structurally, that makes complete sense because he was just demanding that we tell him what we want to know. We can't answer, so he just starts fishing. This one's about his feelings of jealousy at seeing her (presumably Jenny) over there smoking someone else's cigarette in his imagination. Here's the kicker, though. No idea if he's jealous of him for garnering Jenny's attention, or if he's jealous of Jenny for garnering his attention. Or, maybe "gotta be down because i want it all" is the actual pertinent lyric because he loves both of them individually, but it turned out to be a really bad idea to bring them together. Regardless, that's our second enigma.

3) more snark and breakup type stuff. He's torn between the post breakup reality he lives in and the jealous fantasy of someone else taking his place. What's most interesting here is the cross correlation: being in love equals childhood naivety, breaking up equals bitter maturity. "Smile Like You Mean It" becomes a grounding mantra, a reminder to move forward rather than dwell on the past. 

4) dating is hell, especially when all you know is rumors instead of names. No real subtext here, just a clever play on gender roles. Or maybe he's at a swinger's club, idfk.

5) now he's depressingly lonely, so he begs his old friends to just hang out with him. But notice the switch, now he's a cold-hearted child, searching for grown up commeraderie.

That's a helluva side A. It doesn't really answer our 2 primary questions, but it fully fleshes out the character of the narrator. What i can say is that it heavily skews to the simple breakup side of the interpretive schism, and requires a ton of heavy lifting to read Side A as the lead up to killing his ex-girlfriend Jenny so he could be with the man she left him for. Not that that's not possible, just that the language is much more directed toward straightforward breakup emotions and the depressive fixation they cause. 

Whew, I haven't had to pause an album review in a long, long time. On the plus side, Hot Fuss is a serious album for serious album lovers. On the minus, we'll have to tackle side b tomorrow, 'cause i'm exhausted. Hopefully i'll see you on the flip side....

Part 2