Happy 20th Anniversary to The Killers’ second studio album Sam’s Town, originally released in Japan September 27, 2006, in the UK October 2, 2006 and in the US October 3, 2006.
Last winter, I signed up to do the Albumism retrospective for Sam’s Town, the sophomore record by The Killers. My very first article for the site was about the band’s debut, Hot Fuss (2004), and this seemed like a fun way to follow that up. I’d get to write an article about a big, loud album, maybe list out my favorite Mark Stoermer bass lines, and take a break from my usual rhapsodizing about sad guy music. To be honest, I’ve never thought very hard about Sam’s Town, and I didn’t plan to start.
Then, over the summer, things got weird. I had several months off from my teaching job but found myself stuck in the same routine every day and getting irrationally angry when it was disrupted. Then, I’d get mad at myself for not taking advantage of my summertime freedom. I found myself belligerently asking questions about the future: about whether my relationship would survive (it didn’t), whether my city was right for me, whether I would get to be a father, whether I was doing enough in the world. I would pass up nights out because I just had to sit on the couch and answer these unanswerable questions. My lack of information about the future, which to most people is just a fact of life, had become completely intolerable. Things were, clinically speaking, not good.
I got help. It was not easy. But I am learning to leave some questions unanswered, to say no to the part of my brain that needs to know. More than anything, I want to feel better.
About six weeks into this whole process, the alert on my calendar came up: the Sam’s Town article would be due in a month. I didn’t relish the idea of writing about a fun record. But, I did what I usually do when an Albumism article looms on the horizon—put the record on in the background while going about my daily life, absorbing it, hoping an idea would come. I was washing dishes when Brandon Flowers screamed “Help me get down! / If I only knew the answer / I wouldn’t be bothering you, father!” on album closer “Why Do I Keep Counting.”
A few times in your life, a song will take all the disparate questions and anxieties that run in the background and pull them together, laying them out before you, showing you what is happening inside of you. This was one of those times.
Sam’s Town is about the difference between ambition and a desperate anxiety response. How do you know if you want to do more because you care, or if it’s just a way to satisfy the part of yourself that demands to know that you’re enough? Are you trying to build, or are you just afraid?
Listen to the Album:
When the album is at its best, it feels both of those feelings. The opening and title track has Flowers careening into a massive chorus, singing “I’m sick of all my judges / So scared of what they’ll find / But I know that I can make it / as long as somebody takes me home.” The track later dips into its “I see London / I see Sam’s Town” bridge—Sam’s Town is the name of a hotel that Stoermer could see from his childhood bedroom window—as the band realize that making it big didn’t magically transform them into new people. They’re still the same guys that grew up in the shadow of Sam’s Town, hungry and hopeful that it will one day have mattered that they were here.
In the broader culture, Sam’s Town’s major contribution is “When You Were Young,” a tune so thick that The Killers sometimes close their shows with it—despite also having written “Mr. Brightside,” the show-closer-to-end-all-show-closers.
But for my purposes, “When You Were Young” is about the slow, slipping away of idealism. Waking up and realizing that, actually, the future you thought you were working toward isn’t here yet…and if it isn’t here now, when’s it going to show up? I don’t know about you, but I feel a loyalty to do what the younger version of myself never could—but maybe holding myself to those expectations is just a way to “[burn] down a highway skyline / on the back of a hurricane].” The way I tried to explain it was “I feel like my brain is on fire,” so, you know, it’s basically the same thing.
The Killers respond to all this delirium with big, loud songs, because that is what they do in most situations. “Read My Mind,” “My List,” and “This River Is Wild” all find ways to capture the hysteria of a breakdown with a rock tune. And in doing so, they point a missile at the question that waits at the record’s end: “If I pave my streets with good times / will the mountain keep on giving?” If I just crank up the volume on my synth, sing louder, write another gnarly bass line, and drive faster, can I outrun this thing that’s trying to eat me from inside?
No.
You can write the biggest chorus in the world, but eventually the music will stop. But it is not wrong to want that to work. Sam’s Town is not about running away, it’s not about staying home, it’s not about finding a new way forward. It dedicates forty minutes of rock and roll to the feeling of wanting it all to be better. And if that’s something that hits you right in the tummy, well, The Killers can’t fix you. But they can give voice to the feeling of wanting to feel better.
Watch the Official Videos:
The last song on Sam’s Town, the schlockily-named “Exitlude,” feels like a gentle push out the door. “It’s good to have you with us / even if it’s just for today /Outside the sun is shining / seems like heaven ain’t far away.” As if the band is saying “We got some feelings out together. Now go out there and do something.” Don’t turn the record over and start the cycle again. Get out there and do whatever’s going to get you out of the hole.
Listen:
