The Killers have discussed the viral moment where they paused a gig in London to screen England’s victory at the Euro 2024 semi-final, and revealed that they had also prepared for other outcomes to the match.
The moment took place on July 11, during the Las Vegas band’s six-night residency at The O2 as part of their ongoing ‘Rebel Diamonds’ tour.
Ten songs into their performance, frontman Brandon Flowers and co. paused the concert to watch the clashing Euro semi-final with the O2 audience. After England secured a 2-1 victory, red and white streamers were fired to raucous applause, and the band dove right into ‘Mr. Brightside’ to celebrate.
Drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. also donned the England jersey for a portion of the show, and footage of the gig soon went viral on social media.
Speaking to NME backstage at Mad Cool 2024 in Madrid, both Flowers and Vannucci Jr. explained how the idea to show the match during their set arose.
“I have a son who is 13 now and he is obsessed with what we call soccer and what you call football,” Flowers told us. “So I’ve gotten introduced to this new world, and we were watching all the matches so I was aware of what was going on and that led to this very important match between England and Holland.”
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He added: “It happened to be going on while we were playing a gig, so we just wanted to do something special for the fans, and it ended up being something that timed out really well. You can’t really make anything happen like that. It was a lot of luck.”
When asked about how they prepared for the result, which was ultimately a win for the England team, Flowers went on to reveal that the band had plans for all different outcomes on the night.
“We had scenarios planned for if they won, if they lost, if it went an extra 30 minutes, if it went to penalties,” he explained. “We had everything covered and it just happened when it happened.”
Elsewhere in the discussion with NME, the two members also reflected on the recent news that they had been presented with two Guinness World Records for their hit song ‘Mr. Brightside‘.
As of July 4, the track has spent a total of 416 weeks on the UK singles chart – the longest by a group – as well as the most cumulative weeks on the UK singles chart with one song. In total, that amounts to almost eight years.
“It’s incredible [because] we’ve watched it grow too. It’s not just something that has always existed,” Flowers said. “The song has been there but something happened about 10 years ago where a switch got flipped. It’s taken on a whole life of its own.”
You can watch the full video interview below.
In other Killers news, it was confirmed earlier today (July 15) that the band had been presented with an award to mark their six-night residency at London’s O2 arena, which broke the record for the most tickets sold.
Their performances took place on July 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 and 11, and saw Flowers and co. celebrate 20 years of hits. During these shows, there were over 105,000 tickets sold – marking the highest number for any music act at The O2 this year.
Later this year, they will kick off a Las Vegas residency to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album ‘Hot Fuss’. You can find any remaining tickets here.