Ed Sheeran and Brandon Flowers Sing 'Mr. Brightside': Our 'National Anthem'
Ed Sheeran was coming out of his cage and doing just fine, thanks to some help from The Killers’ Brandon Flowers.
While performing at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium on Saturday, October 28, as part of his Mathematics Tour, Sheeran, 32, offered his guests a little bit of a Halloween treat. Sheeran, dressed as Chucky from the Child’s Play/Chucky franchise, said he was going to bring out a Vegas native to “sing the song that is essentially, like, my country’s national anthem.”
From there, the opening chords of “Mr. Brightside” — arguably The Killers’ biggest hit — started to play, and out came Flowers, 42, dressed fashionably in black. He led the crowd in a sing-along while Sheeran played guitar and joined in on the chorus.
After Sheeran played on one of Flowers’s songs, the alt-rock icon stuck around to return the favor. Flowers and Sheeran performed “Castle On The Hill” from the latter’s 2017 album, +, leaving the Vegas crowd — and Flowers himself — delighted. Throughout the performance, which was captured by a fan, Flowers seemed thrilled to be playing for his hometown and sharing a stage with his fellow music superstar.
“Mr. Brightside” was The Killers’ debut single, hitting the airwaves in 2003, one year before they released their first studio album, Hot Fuss. The song reached No. 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. In 2014, NME listed the song as No. 116 on its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list, arguing the band “should not have worked. Then you heard this freewheeling hate-ride of bitterness and infidelity [“Mr. Brightside”], and they made immaculate sense.”
Additionally, Rolling Stone put it at No. 48 in its roundup of “100 Best Songs of the 2000s,” while Pitchfork called the song “one of the biggest and best straight-up rock singles of 2005.”
The Killers most recently released Pressure Machine, the band’s seventh studio album, in August 2021. With a more Americana, folk-rock tone, the album received mostly positive reviews from critics.
Following his Sin City concert, Sheeran joined The Chainsmokers at the XS Nightclub inside Wynn Las Vegas to commemorate the end of his U.S. tour. He made an appearance in the DJ booth before treating club-goers to his chart-topping hit songs “Shape of You,” “Perfect” and “Bad Habits,” partying until the early hours of the morning.
Though Sheeran was in a Halloween mood for this Vegas concert, he recently had to downplay the rumors that he was building a “crypt” on his estate in England. “I wouldn’t say it’s a crypt,” he told GQ earlier this month, saying that he built a chapel on his property to mourn those who have passed away in his life. He also hosts friends’ weddings there. However, the chapel itself was so beautiful that while it was being built, he decided he would want to be interred there.
“It’s a hole that’s dug in the ground with a bit of stone over it, so whenever the day comes and I pass away, I get to go in there,” he told the publication. “People think it’s really weird and really morbid, but I’ve had friends die without wills, and no one knows what to do.”
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