Brandon Flowers goes solo

There have been lots of new releases this week, but one that especially caught my eye was ‘Crossfire’ by Killers front man Brandon Flowers. As a huge Killers fan I was very excited to see if Flowers could hold his own when the rest of the band decided to take a break. This single is the first from his debut solo album ‘Flamingo’, apparently named after a road in Las Vegas, the city where Flowers was bought up.

His first solo single has done pretty well in the charts, with ‘Crossfire’ landing at number eight, but this is to be expected due to his previous success with the killers, so is the song actually any good? Well yes, actually, with a catchy chorus and Flowers’ strong but vulnerable voice, it makes for quite a reasonable track. The lyrics don’t seem to make much sense, but at least they sound good together, which is the main thing.

The video is quite strange, and doesn’t really seem to have any particular point to it, but it’s doubtful anybody’s going to be taking much notice of that when you’ve got a battered and bruised, yet handsome Brandon Flowers and stunning movie star Charlize Theron to look at. With samurai swords and ninja warriors it does in fact look like a scene from a Hollywood movie.

Although it’s a perfectly good song, it’s not really different enough from The Killers songs for it to stand out as obviously just Flowers by himself. It doesn’t have the wow factor that the first Killers album did where pretty much every song on it was potentially a hit single, maybe he’ll have some great stuff on the rest of his ‘Flamingo’ album, but this didn’t blow me away like I hoped. Maybe after Flowers has finished experimenting with his solo career he’ll go back to The Killers and make some music that lives up to ‘Hot Fuss’, we can hope anyway.

One Night Only: Say you don't want it

Yorkshire indie band ‘One Night Only’ released the first single from their self titled new album earlier this week. The single ‘Say you don’t want it’ has been highly anticipated due to front man George Craig’s girlfriend, and Harry Potter star, Emma Watson appearing in the video, but does the single live up to the hype? 
 

‘One Night Only’ released their debut album in 2008, so they’re still quite new to the music world, and from what you can hear from this single, their sound hasn’t changed particularly. They’ve kept their classic ‘easy on the ears’ sound which will be sure to push it up the charts. Most people will recognise ‘Just for Tonight’ and ‘You and Me’ from their first album but they seem to have disappeared from memory the last couple of years. 

The very first few seconds of ‘Say you don’t want it’ feel slightly out of place and unusual, the almost Muse like sound was a little strange. However, the song is a toe tapping, upbeat song that has awesome lyrics you can’t help but sing along to. The line ‘The big screens, the plastic made dreams’ in particular rolls off the tongue very easily, and when lead singer Craig belts out ‘Say you don’t want it’ it’s said with determination and infectious enthusiasm. The message of the song, it seems, is people’s reliability on material goods, one line in particular ‘paint all your soul with the brand designs’ pretty much sums up the point of this song.   

The beat and the guitar in particular, drive the song forward, which makes it easy to listen and move to. The fact that it’s repetitive makes it stick in your head, but not in an annoying way, and its upbeat rhythm makes it really enjoyable to listen to. Overall I really liked this song and I can see it being very successful, but not just because Emma Watson is in the video.  

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Welcome to my blog, i'm going to be talking about music, films and the occasional TV programme, it's my first blog so I hope you like it, and a review should be up soon.