Not many nine year olds listen to alternative rock music, or actively want to listen to their parent’s choice of music. But that’s why I feel unique, and I have since I was nine, listening to the 1990s and 2000s rock music my dad exposed me to on CDs and Limewire downloads. The Killers specifically have been my go-to favorite band for as long as I can remember. They have been the core of my nostalgic music taste throughout my middle school and high school education. Multiple songs and albums still remind me of the friendship, bullying, and happiness that occurred in the last twelve years of my life. Some of those memories are bitter to reminisce as there are multiple occasions where I was told I should not listen to the Killers’ music. However, the emotions and stories I have absorbed still bring me back to the blissful happiness I felt when I first listened to Somebody Told Me at nine years old.
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My mom was not a fan of her first, sweet daughter listening to rock music by Green Day, Three Days Grace, and the Killers in fourth grade, but she couldn’t impede on my intrigue of grunge songs about love and anger my own loving father introduced me to. At this age, my dad eventually passed down a pair of quality headphones that could have burst my ear drums from the bass. Every day, I plugged the headphones into my green iPod and blissfully listened to Somebody Told Me on repeat until I fell asleep. Once, I accidentally played the few songs I knew by the Killers at full volume in my sleep and my dad was extremely concerned for my hearing afterwards. But that is how much I loved my newfound music taste.
In fourth grade, our co-ed gym class was playing an innocent game of flag football and was told to name our teams. As I has just learned the actual title of my new favorite band, I wanted that to be the name of our team. I informed my fellow teammates before the game started and they all trusted my judgment, and I felt like the team leader. We won the game and at the end, the team excitedly put our hands together to celebrate and yelled “GO KILLERS!” My middle-aged gym teacher did share the same enthusiasm when he heard this. He whipped around to see a group of nine-year-olds yelling excitedly about violence, and for some reason I was shocked when he sternly said, “you are not allowed to say that!” I innocently responded, “But it’s just a name of a band…”
The embarrassment grew inside me for being scolded for something I only thought was playful and creative. For the rest of the day I did not speak to my team members nor the gym teacher, which was my usual tactic whenever I was “yelled” at. That was my first experience where I believed it was wrong to enjoy this genre of music.
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One of my best friends, Meghan, and I became close in the eighth grade after knowing each other for the previous two years of middle school. I thought she was so cool because she was confident, played on my soccer team, loved the Killers, art, and also had blonde hair. We had so much in common that I was ecstatic to have so many similarities with someone! We also couldn’t stand the One Direction fandom that emerged throughout the whole middle school, and we bonded through multiple activities together and with our three mutual friends. But those likenesses soon became a form of anxiety and sadness through the unexpected bullying I experienced by Meghan and our two other best friends.
In August 2012, I created an Instagram account dedicated to my love and interest of alternative rock music (because for some reason that was cool for “emo kids” in 2012). My account name read, “Brenna Flowers,” a creative dedication to Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of my favorite band. When Meghan saw my account, she ordered me to change the name of my profile, claiming I was copying her interests and music taste. For one week, I received harsh text messages through the Instagram app from Meghan, claiming how unoriginal I am and copying her on multiple occasions. In those seven days, I woke up with a pit in my stomach every morning, terrified to see the cruel Instagram notifications from Meghan. She easily made me believe I did something utterly disturbing and embarrassing, so I kept these messages hidden from my parents for five months. Mind you, I was fourteen, which was when my anxiety started emerging. This was the worst thing I had experienced thus far in my life and I did not know how to handle the manipulation and bullying.
Those months from August 2012 to January 2013 dragged on and the fighting and anxiety followed me to the start of my freshman year of high school. In that time, two of Meghan and I’s best friends decided to dive into the drama; Erin and Miranda. My two other best friends decided to harass me in the same manner as Meghan. Unkind text messages and Snapchats throughout the days, declaring their own hatred of me and my friendship, and I believed every word they typed. Even after Meghan and I “reconciled” with our differences, Erin and Miranda remained to send hurtful messages to the point that I felt a pain in my chest every time my phone vibrated, similar to the feeling Meghan's messages gave me.
And I could not bring myself to listen to the Killers, or any form of alternative music, for weeks.
Only did they stop harassing me was when I finally told my parents what I have been experiencing and feeling for five months. On my mom’s forty-third birthday in January, after a family weekend in New Hampshire, I started to cry in the living room. In my parents’ perspective, it was unexpected. But for me, the accumulation of emotions and anxiety could not be held in and I finally sat with my mom and dad. While explaining the events of the previous five months through sobs and deep breaths, my parents were astounded that I kept this pain from them for so long, and more irritated at the fourteen-year-old girls they had formerly respected as my best friends. My dad even had to text Erin on my phone to tell her to stop texting me, and call her parents to inform them! Crazy.
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My first positive experience of sharing the interest of my favorite band occurred in my ninth-grade Algebra class with Emily.
My dad bought tickets to see the Killers live at Agganis Arena in Boston, as we are both concert fanatics, on a week night. I posted the best songs they performed on my Snapchat story, and one of my classmates, who I never talked to before, asked me how the concert was the next day in my afternoon Algebra class. Emily overheard the two of talking about the Killers and shared her love for their music too, and our friendship basically started right there. Every class we would talk about our preferred songs, their newest album Battle Born, and other bands of a similar sound. She loved all the same alternative music and I knew we were going to be friends based on this one similarity. At every sweet sixteen party, father-daughter dance, or high school dance we attended together, we requested at least one popular Killers song to be played at each event. It was the thing that brought us together at age fifteen.
As my best friend, Emily helped my high school boyfriend at the time plan a creative prom-posal for me in March of our senior year. Of course, she recommended using a Killers’ reference, which was executed with my boyfriend’s car blasting Somebody Told Me and holding a poster that read, “Somebody told me, that you had a boyfriend who looked like a promposal specialist. It’s not confidential but, do I have potential?” It was corny, but represented how much I still love the band.
Emily and I even saw the Killers live twice together, after stressfully buying tickets online in a random Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot and shrieking after we got them. We repeatedly practiced the lyrics to every song on the new album Wonderful Wonderful in 2017 in every car ride we took to prepare for the best concert we could ever go to. Dancing and shouting the lyrics to every song until we were light headed was a tradition whenever we were together. We even named each other in our contacts as “Miss Atomic Bomb💣💋” after the song from the Battle Born album.
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I recently listened to Miss Atomic Bomb on my Killers Spotify playlist while listening for the purpose of nostalgic inspiration. Desolate emotions immediately struck at the first piano key. It was not just because the song itself starts slow and melancholy, but because I am reminded of the memorable friendship I no longer have. The line, “You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone…” briefly explains how I feel when listening to the Killers without my best friend. I do not know what emotions are revived when Emily listens to Mr. Brightside or When You Were Young now, without me. But I do hope she is also reminded of our bygone friendship and the nostalgia the music of the Killers brings me.
