A favourite of freshers week club nights, wedding discos and playing-out-loud-from-phone-speakers-on-the-bus nationwide, Mr Brightside has taken on a new life here in the UK in the past decade.
Originally released by the hit Las Vegas-based group The Killers in 2003, the song reached a whole new audience when it was re-released a year later, eventually peaking at number 10 in the UK singles chart.
While for most songs, that would be the end of their chart journey, Mr Brightside has somehow only got bigger in the past 10 years thanks to streaming.
If you need further proof, the Official Charts Company has revealed that not only was 2023 the track’s biggest year ever for streams, it’s now overtaken Oasis’ Wonderwall to become the UK’s highest-selling song to never reach number one.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Mr Brighstide is now the third biggest-selling song of all time here in the UK.
“Thank you so much to all our fans for making Mr. Brightside the third biggest song of all time in the UK, and the biggest ever not to have reached number one – not yet at least!” frontman Brandon Flowers told the Official Charts Company.
He added: “It’s funny, I almost don’t feel so much of a part of it anymore. It’s just this thing that exists in the world, and it’s amazing that I had something to do with it, but I almost feel a little bit removed from it because it’s so big.”
Mr Brightside has sold 5.57 million copies (a figure made up of 1.066m sales and 530,340,000 streams).
Watch the song’s iconic music video below: