The Killers Discuss Pausing Their Show to Watch England’s Euro 2024 Victory and More
The Killers recently went viral for pausing their concert in London to screen England’s 2-1 victory over the Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final. The moment occurred on July 11 during the band’s six-night residency at The O2 as part of their ‘Rebel Diamonds’ tour.
Ten songs into their performance, frontman Brandon Flowers and the band paused the show to watch the crucial match with the O2 audience. After England’s victory, red and white streamers were fired to raucous applause, and the band celebrated by diving into ‘Mr. Brightside’. Drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. also wore an England jersey for part of the show, and footage of the event quickly went viral on social media.
Speaking backstage at Mad Cool 2024 in Madrid, Flowers and Vannucci Jr. explained how the idea to show the match during their set came about.
“I have a son who is 13 now and he is obsessed with what we call soccer and what you call football,” Flowers shared. “So I’ve gotten introduced to this new world, and we were watching all the matches, so I was aware of what was going on and that led to this very important match between England and Holland.”
He added, “It happened to be going on while we were playing a gig, so we just wanted to do something special for the fans, and it ended up being something that timed out really well. You can’t really make anything happen like that. It was a lot of luck.”
When asked about their preparation for different match outcomes, Flowers revealed the band had planned for all possible scenarios. “We had scenarios planned for if they won, if they lost, if it went an extra 30 minutes, if it went to penalties,” he explained. “We had everything covered, and it just happened when it happened.”
In addition to discussing this viral moment, Flowers and Vannucci Jr. reflected on their recent achievements. The band was presented with two Guinness World Records for their hit song ‘Mr. Brightside’. As of July 4, the track has spent a total of 416 weeks on the UK singles chart – the longest by a group – and holds the record for the most cumulative weeks on the UK singles chart with one song, amounting to almost eight years.
“It’s incredible [because] we’ve watched it grow too. It’s not just something that has always existed,” Flowers said. “The song has been there but something happened about 10 years ago where a switch got flipped. It’s taken on a whole life of its own.”
The band also received an award for their six-night residency at London’s O2 arena, which broke the record for the most tickets sold. Their performances on July 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11 celebrated 20 years of hits and saw over 105,000 tickets sold, marking the highest number for any music act at The O2 this year.