The Killers, and especially flamboyant frontman Brandon Flowers, have never been ones to bite their tongues when it comes to their own success, and a new interview with Noisey has seem them weigh in on why rock bands are struggling to find mainstream audiences in the same way they were in decades past.
Speaking to Noisey ahead of the release of their upcoming fifth LP Wonderful Wonderful, which features its fair share of bragging on new single ‘The Man’, Brandon Flowers and Ronnie Vanucci Jr. claim that it isn’t just the changing media climate and tastes preventing rock bands from being the world’s biggest acts – it’s simply that they’re not “good enough”.
“It could happen,” Flowers responded when asked if he could see any band breaking through the same way The Killers did back when Hot Fuss was released in 2004, “but there hasn’t been anybody good enough.
“If there was a band like the Strokes, or Interpol, people would talk. If there were some kids out there [in Brooklyn] right now playing ‘Obstacle 1’ tonight, I would hear about it, you would hear about it,” he adds. “But there isn’t.”
Vanucci Jr. was just as brutal with his assessment, also blaming the quality of the bands for the declining state of rock, rather than any external factors.
“People are very quick to blame a changing of the times for a lot of things,” he said, “when it’s really that they’re just not good enough yet.”
Flowers of course claimed that The Killers were the best band of the past decade-and-a-half several years ago, so it’s not surprising to hear that nothing has stood out to him in recent times.
“Whether the people want to accept it or not, we might be the best band in the last long time!” he said. “I’d go up any night against just about any band that’s come out in the last 15 years.”
To his credit, he did also admit that their last LP Battle Born “wasn’t good enough” and “we all know it”, meaning he has a lot to prove when its follow-up Wonderful Wonderful drops on September 22.
Now, it seems, it’s just up to all of our new rock bands to step up to the plate.
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