Brandon Flowers has drawn on his childhood in rural Utah for Thrasher, a new solo album that marks a return to the places and country music that shaped him before The Killers became global stars.
The singer grew up in Nephi, a small town about an hour and a half south of Salt Lake, after his family moved there from Las Vegas when he was eight. He later returned to Las Vegas for his final year of high school, where The Killers formed and began their rise to fame.
Flowers was not yet 23 when the band broke through with “Mr Brightside”, a song about infidelity inspired by his own experience. Its storytelling helped distinguish The Killers from many of their contemporaries, prompting Flowers to consider where that instinct had come from.
“I noticed early on, people would talk about the storytelling in Killers music, that they didn’t always associate with young rock bands,” he said. “And I think that was when it first started to maybe dawn on me, where was I getting this from?”
Brandon Flowers’ Utah roots inspire Thrasher
Nephi, with its single traffic light, was a stark contrast to Las Vegas. Flowers has said he struggled to fit in, while also helping his father with work on an apartment building run as a family business.
Music became one of his connections to the outside world. He searched through cassette bins at the local Flying J truck stop, where he discovered a Depeche Mode record.
The town’s golf course also provided a version of the nightlife he had known in Las Vegas. Flowers described it as a place where people gathered to play sport and drink, and said it was where he first encountered cigarettes, chewing tobacco and alcohol.
Those memories now feed into Thrasher, a country-western project influenced by the music his father played on the radio. Flowers said the genre gave him room to explore “stories and characters and detail”, adding: “I was secretly absorbing it.”
The album includes “The American Dream”, a song filled with images of cars, road travel and a longing to return home. Its themes reflect Flowers’ continuing interest in the people and places of his childhood.
Nine years ago, Flowers moved back to Utah with his wife and children. He said the family is now confronting the difficult transition as their three sons grow up, with one recently leaving for Pennsylvania.
“They don’t prepare you for this,” he said. “You know, watching kids be young and that innocence and raising them was maybe the best, you know, felt like the greatest time for me. And now we just took one and dropped them off in Pennsylvania yesterday. It’s just a tough thing to wrap your head around, letting them go.”
Flowers has also spoken about balancing his Mormon faith with life as a rock star. He cites Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash as examples of musicians who were deeply religious while wrestling with the demands and contradictions of fame.
“One of the things I love about Elvis is, I see him as sort of like a spiritual progenitor and someone that, no matter what mistakes he made, you know – and we all know everything about Elvis – but just he was still deeply religious,” Flowers said.
For all the success that followed The Killers, Flowers said his deepest sense of achievement has come from family life rather than the stage.
“I have three sons, and me and my wife have been married for 21 years and it’s just, those are the things you start to realize, what is success?” he said. “I have a great time on stage, I love writing songs, it’s fulfilling for me. But I am so happy walking down the street with you right now.”
