The Killers’ Mr Brightside, already the longest-running Prime 100 hit in UK chart historical past, has been named the most important single to not attain UK No 1.
At the moment in its 408th week within the chart at No 71 and nonetheless being streamed by the British public 1.8m instances every week, Mr Brightside – which has develop into a much-chanted staple at boozy weddings, karaoke nights and tacky membership nights – has overtaken Oasis’s Wonderwall as probably the most profitable single to not attain No 1, with 5.57m chart gross sales (together with 1.066m precise gross sales and 530,340,000 streams).
Mr Brightside was first launched in 2003 in a run of 500 singles by British indie label Lizard King. The band had their breakthrough the next 12 months with UK No 3 hit Any individual Instructed Me, and the re-released Mr Brightside reached No 10. It has by no means reached any larger than that, however buoyed by the gradual shift to streaming, it has barely been out of the charts since mid-2020.
The band mentioned: “This award means rather a lot to us, Mr Brightside has been fully embraced by the British public and we are able to’t wait to have a good time with you all on the highway.”
Overtaking Wonderwall is a poignant second, on condition that Oasis had been the central inspiration for Mr Brightside. “I needed to put in writing a solution to Don’t Look Again in Anger, which is an odd aspiration for a 20-year-old,” frontman Brandon Flowers advised the Guardian in 2019.
Mr Brightside has a lovesick Flowers imagining a lover going to mattress with one other man, and making an attempt to place a courageous face on it: the optimist of the title line. It was written after a breakup with the girl Flowers had seen an Oasis gig with. “The wound was uncooked,” he mentioned, “so it was cathartic for me. There was nonetheless one thing actually romantic about it: it was earlier than telephones. I really put pen to paper and we had been in a position to flip that into one thing common. To make betrayal sound so good was only a fortunate factor that I stumbled upon.”
Following the Killers and Oasis within the rating of probably the most profitable non-No 1s is John Legend, whose open-hearted piano ballad All of Me is one other marriage ceremony staple – although extra for strolling down the aisle than slipping over on the dancefloor.
Hozier’s Take Me to Church and the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York spherical out the highest 5, adopted by Ed Sheeran’s Fortress on the Hill, Vance Pleasure’s Riptide (one other track that solely reached No 10), Bastille’s Pompeii, Passenger’s Let Her Go and George Ezra’s Budapest.
The Killers are gearing as much as tour their newest biggest hits assortment, Insurgent Diamonds, across the UK from 18 June.
