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7:15 · 1,263 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The song only ever peaked at number ten in the UK, and since its 2004 reissue it has appeared in the top 100 singles every year, passing 200 weeks on that chart.
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- Brandon Flowers was fired from a synth-pop band and decided after an Oasis concert that he belonged in a rock band, then found his guitarist through an advert in a Las Vegas newspaper.
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- Hearing The Strokes' debut discouraged them enough that they scrapped everything they had written except this one song.
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- The riff existed before the two met, and Flowers had just come out of a relationship in which he found his partner had been unfaithful, so the rest came together quickly.
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- There is no second verse because he had nothing more to say, which is one reason the song is as singable as it is.
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- They played it at an open mic with no drummer and were unimpressed, and only when a friend added a backbeat did they realise what they had.
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- A Warner Brothers rep found the demo online and became their manager, but the showcases failed and it was a UK A&R rep who took it to a London indie label that signed them unseen.
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- It was the reissue rather than the original release that changed things, after their first single had done only moderately well.
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- In America it was a sleeper, not entering the Hot 100 until the following February and taking nearly five more months to peak at ten.
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- It is now the most streamed song of anything released before 2010, averaging close to a million plays a week, and the band have never played a gig without it.
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