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Notes -
Anyone have any theories on the song Mr Bright side by the killers? Specifically why it's been so popular for so long?
I like the song, it's good. I just don't know if I'd label it as one of the greatest songs of the last 50 years, which is what is implied by it's longevity in top song charts.
It’s not explicitly gendered as a concept (romantic jealousy) even if sung from a male perspective, its subject matter is near-universal, it has catchy lyrics, it doesn’t involve any highly vulgar sexual references and it’s sung by a man. Plus it’s energetic and upbeat, and it captures what a lot of people like to believe feels like the ‘happy sadness’ of the end of a big night. This combination is rarer than you think. Toxic is an all time song with catchy lyrics but straight men won’t sing it out loud most of the time, and it doesn’t have the slight melancholy of that song. Mr Brightside is inoffensive and universal, happy and sad, and nobody’s embarrassed to sing it.
Huh?
Do you mean the viewpoint character isn't explicitly gendered? I suppose that would mean that the song appeals just as much to straight men as to lesbians whose bisexual girlfriends cheated on them with men, but surely the latter demographic is too small for it to have any meaningful impact on the song's cultural staying power.
The concept isn’t explicitly gendered. Straight men especially hate singing songs sung from the perspective of a woman talking about men. In this case, Mr Brightside benefits both from the fact that it’s from a generic male perspective (avoiding that risk; women are much less worried about looking ‘gay’ for singing along to lyrics like this than men would be about the inverse) and from the fact that romantic jealousy is a near-universal emotion.
The "Mr." Brightside chorus pretty heavily genders it, but it genders it male, and most women don't mind singing from a generic male perspective.
Although its actual relationship to homosexuality gets weird if you look at it from the right lens. The song's about Flowers actually seeing his girlfriend getting kissed by another man and then spiraling -- there's no ambiguity there, he's answered interview questions spelling it out -- but the lyrics are bizarrely compatible with the singer being jealous of the woman and being cheated on by the man. And that's separate from the male-worshipping tones a lot of cuckolding picks up.
((Though actual gay cuckolding looks hilariously different.))
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