The Killers: "Human"

If you live in America, you may have not heard this song. I hadn’t, until I remembered that the Killers had a new album out and that many good nights had been soundtracked to their first three singles. And then I heard it. The chorus goes: “Are we human or are we dancer?”

Let me repeat that: “Are we human or are we dancer?”

This is the point in the career where the UK fanbase breaks away from the US one. This is the point where they start falling off the charts in the Land of the Free. You see, Brits have a high tolerance for silliness and camp, even if it starts veering into low-IQ territory. In America we like our dumb shit unselfconscious and earnest, like Nickelback or George W. Bush. But when a band is effeminate and stupid, we bail instantly.

Apparently the chorus comes from a Hunter S. Thompson quote. I’m sure he said a lot of crazy shit in his day, but that doesn’t mean you flip to page 136 of the Blazed To Shit Diaries and go right to the footnotes about the mindblowingly horrible thing he said that made him stop mixing LSD with everclear.

To sum up, the Killers have destroyed half of their career singlehandedly with a single line. If the Guinness Book Of World Records had a slot for this kind of thing they would own it forever, but as is they’ll probably have to settle for a CMG year-end list. It doesn’t matter if you have some nice trancey Gary Numan synths or a Coldplay melody. You said the dumbest shit ever and Obama just got elected. Go back to 2004 where we really needed you.