Brandon Flowers Still Fueled By Competition With Ezra Koenig

It turns out that even if you make a song as big as "Mr. Brightside," you still succumb to feelings of competition with your peers. Brandon Flowers is not shy about this; in 2020, he told NME that he was grateful for Ezra Koenig because Vampire Weekend's Father Of The Bride "helped to propel us into the right direction and realize that we couldn't just phone in the Killers' record." In a new interview with Anthony Mason, Flowers expanded on this topic.Flowers is getting ready to release his third solo album, the countrified Thrasher. In the interview, he discussed the first feelings of competition he experienced in the Killers: "Well, the Strokes put out their first record around this time. And it really, really had an impact on me," he said. "At first it was really negative. I felt like life was really over. The bar went from here to here. And it's like, it's over. My life is over." He compared the relationship between the Strokes and the Killers to the relationship between the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and said, "I think a little bit of competition's really good." The Killers famously scrapped all their early songs, except for "Mr Brightside," after they heard Is This It. "The ...