Brandon Flowers Might Have Saved My Life

The opening note of When You Were Young is a single sustained guitar chord—nothing technically impressive, just the universe holding its breath—and then the whole thing floods in. I’ve probably heard it more times than I’ve heard my own voice.

The Killers’ Sam’s Town came out in 2006 and was, taken whole, one of the best rock albums of that decade. Almost uncomfortably sincere—Brandon Flowers meant every word, and you could hear it, and somehow that made it harder to listen to rather than easier. They never made another record that close to something. Day & Age had its moments, but everything after Sam’s Town was a kind of managed retreat from whatever they’d touched on that album.

I had one of the more spectacular heartbreaks of my life soundtracked by this song. The details are mine. What I remember is driving at night, When You Were Young on repeat, a specific quality of misery that only 2006 could produce—the particular texture of falling apart before smartphones existed to distract you. Whether Brandon and the boys actually saved my life is unknowable. But they were there, and they sounded like they meant it. Sometimes that’s the whole thing.