Spotify last year named Mr Brightside (EMI) by The Killers as its most streamed track ever in the UK.
Now it’s emerged that the indie-pop perennial has achieved a new chart milestone by becoming the biggest single of all time not to reach No.1 (so far at least), according to the Official Charts Company.
First appearing as a single in 2003, Mr Brightside was re-released the following year in the run-up to the band’s debut album Hot Fuss. The updated mix of the single followed the No.3 chart result for Somebody Told Me.
Mr Brightside originally peaked at No.10, 20 years ago this month. Although it dropped out of the chart a few weeks later, the single became a chart fixture in subsequent years, particularly as streaming became the dominant form of consumption.
The single’s success has helped make The Killers one of the biggest live acts in the UK. The Las Vegas band return to the UK and Ireland this summer with the Rebel Diamonds Tour, performing 16 arena shows including four nights at Manchester’s Co-op Live and six nights at The O2 in London.
Based on the latest combined UK sales and streams of 5.57 million (including 1.066m sales and 530,340,000 streams), the song is now confirmed by Official Charts to have overtaken Oasis’ Wonderwall to become the UK’s most successful song of all time yet to reach No.1. In fact, Mr Brightside is the third biggest song of all time in the UK when sales and streams are combined.
To mark two decades since Mr Brightside entered the chart, and the anniversary of the band’s debut album Hot Fuss, Official Charts presented The Killers’ Brandon Flowers with an Official Top 10 Award to crown the record’s iconic status as the biggest Top 10 hit of all time.
The success of Mr Brightside is a triumph of extraordinary longevity
Martin Talbot
With 408 weeks – just under eight years – and counting in the Top 100, Mr Brightside has the most weeks on the chart of any song in the history of the singles rundown.
Twenty years after its first chart appearance, Mr Brightside is still being streamed 1.8 million times per week by the British public. It’s already the third biggest song of all time in the UK based on combined sales and streams.
2023 was Mr Brightside’s biggest year of streams, with 79.97m plays, and in 2024 the track is accelerating further with average combined weekly sales and streams of Mr Brightside up 23% year-on-year.
The song’s biggest week to date in the UK was in July 2019, when it clocked up 17,700 chart units following the band’s headline Glastonbury set. 2012 was Mr Brightside’s biggest year of pure sales, when it was bought and downloaded 125,200 times.
Martin Talbot, chief executive, Official Charts, said: “The success of Mr Brightside is a triumph of extraordinary longevity, it is a song which has lived with so many of us throughout the recent decades of our lives – and, for some, an entire lifetime. Ed Sheeran is absolutely right to describe it as the UK’s alternative national anthem. And for this reason, among many others, it is a huge honour for us to have been able to present Brandon Flowers with one of our brand-new Top 10 Awards in tribute to its legacy and impact. Twenty years on from its first Official Singles Chart appearance, it is now the Top 10 hit that all other Top 10s can only aspire to be.”
Mr Brightside in numbers (source: Official Charts Company)
• The biggest song of all time not to reach No.1 in the UK (sales and streams)
• Third biggest song of all time in the UK
• Fifth most-streamed song of all time in the UK
• 143rd best-selling single of all time in the UK
• 408 weeks in Official Singles Chart Top 100
• Lifetime UK streams: 530,340,000
• Lifetime UK sales: 1,066,000
• Biggest week: Week 27 of 2019, 17,700 chart units – post-Glastonbury headline set
• Biggest year of streams: 2023 - 79,970,000
• Biggest year of sales: 2012 - 125,200
• Average weekly UK chart units in 2024: 15,100
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