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SONGFABLE · 2017

The Man

THE KILLERS · 2017

TL;DR: "The Man" sounds like the cockiest strut in The Killers' catalogue, but it is really Brandon Flowers laughing at the arrogant young rock star he used to be. It is a confession wearing a gold lamé suit.
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The Swagger Is the Joke

Play "The Man" for someone who has never heard it and watch what happens. The bass line slinks in, the falsetto struts, the handclaps pop, and within thirty seconds they are grinning and nodding along to what sounds like the most self-satisfied boast ever put on a rock record. The narrator is irresistible, unbreakable, the best thing to happen to the city since neon. He wants you to know it, and he wants you to know that he knows it.

Here is the twist that makes the song so much better than it first appears: Brandon Flowers does not believe a word of it. Or rather, he used to believe every word of it, around 2005, and that is precisely the point. "The Man" is a portrait of Flowers in his early twenties, freshly famous after Hot Fuss, sure that the world had been arranged for his benefit. Written by a man in his mid-thirties, a husband and father who had spent years learning how hollow that kind of confidence can be, it is a song that lets you enjoy the swagger and then quietly pulls the rug out from under it.

That double vision, the ability to celebrate and critique the same posture in one four-minute disco-rock single, is what turned "The Man" from a fun comeback track into one of the smartest songs The Killers have released.

Background: From Las Vegas Bravado to a Hard Look in the Mirror

To understand "The Man", you have to remember what The Killers were in 2004 and 2005. Four young men from Las Vegas had released a debut album full of glitter, eyeliner and synths, and it had exploded. "Mr. Brightside" and "Somebody Told Me" made them stars almost overnight, and the United Kingdom fell for them before America did. British music magazines put them on covers, British festival crowds sang every word, and Flowers, by his own later admission, became famously mouthy in interviews, taking shots at other bands and speaking as though The Killers had already won.

For British readers there is a lovely irony here. "Mr. Brightside" has become something close to a national anthem in the UK, a song that has reportedly spent more weeks on the UK singles chart than almost any other track in history, a permanent fixture of weddings, pub closing times and football terraces. The young man that song turned into a star is exactly the young man "The Man" pokes fun at. The UK helped build that ego, and in 2017 Flowers came back to the UK and the rest of the world to take it apart in public.

The years in between had not been simple. The band released Sam's Town, Day & Age and Battle Born, toured relentlessly, and then slowed down. By the time they began work on what became Wonderful Wonderful, the line-up itself was shifting: guitarist Dave Keuning and bassist Mark Stoermer were, it is said, stepping back from touring, leaving Flowers and drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. as the core faces on stage. More personally, Flowers had been watching his wife, Tana, struggle with depression and complex post-traumatic stress, and much of the album grew out of that experience. Songs like "Rut" are tender and raw about it.

In that context, "The Man" was a deliberate change of key. Working with producer Jacknife Lee, the band leaned into a funky, groove-heavy sound unlike anything they had released before. The track is built on a borrowing from Kool & the Gang's 1970s funk cut "Spirit of the Boogie", and members of Kool & the Gang reportedly share songwriting credit as a result. That decision says a lot: instead of the jangling guitars or widescreen Springsteen-style heartland rock fans might have expected, The Killers reached back to the strutting, peacock world of 1970s funk and disco, the natural soundtrack for a man who thinks he is God's gift.

Released in June 2017 as the album's lead single, "The Man" announced Wonderful Wonderful, which went on to top the album charts in both the UK and the US. It was, notably, reported to be the band's first number one album in America, a satisfying milestone for a group who had been bigger in Britain for years.

Core Meaning: A Man Arguing With His Younger Self

On the surface, the lyrics are one long brag. The narrator describes himself as a kind of champion: the guy who walks into the room and owns it, the one whose name carries weight around town, the one who can never be beaten, tamed or brought down. He piles boast upon boast, comparing himself to stars, prizefighters and legends, and there is a constant sense of a man performing his own greatness for an audience that may or may not be listening.

What gives the game away is the excess. Every claim is just a little too big. The narrator does not merely say he is good; he insists he is the best, the strongest, the most in control, again and again, like someone trying to convince himself as much as anyone else. Flowers sings much of it in a high, preening falsetto, which already feels a touch absurd, almost like a costume. He is not hiding the irony. He is wearing it.

Flowers explained in interviews around the album's release that the song was written from the point of view of the person he was when the band first broke through. He described looking back at that young man with a mixture of embarrassment and affection: the confidence, the bluster, the assumption that success proved something about his worth. In 2017 he was reckoning with what it actually means to be a man, and he had concluded that the swaggering version he had been sold, and had sold to others, was missing the point entirely.

That is where the song's final turn lands. As it moves towards its close, the boasting begins to crack. There are hints that the narrator's certainty is a shell, that the strength he advertises is not the kind of strength that matters when real life arrives. Flowers has suggested that the ideas of masculinity he grew up with, and that rock stardom amplified, did not prepare him for being a supportive husband to someone in pain or a present father to his sons. The true test of manhood, the song implies, is not dominance or bravado but tenderness, steadiness and showing up.

So "The Man" works on two levels at once. You can sing along to it as a pure confidence anthem, and plenty of people do, blasting it before a night out or a job interview. Or you can hear it as a satire of that very impulse, a middle-aged man smiling ruefully at the strut he once had and the damage that strut can do. The genius is that the song never forces you to choose.

Cultural Context and Legacy

"The Man" arrived at an interesting moment. By 2017 conversations about toxic masculinity had moved from academic circles into mainstream culture, and pop and rock were full of artists reconsidering the old rock-star clichés. What made The Killers' contribution unusual was its sense of humour. Rather than a solemn lecture, Flowers delivered a disco-funk pastiche that let the listener in on the joke. It was a self-critique you could dance to.

The music video made the satire even clearer. Filmed in and around Las Vegas, it reportedly casts Flowers as a string of over-the-top male archetypes: a slick showman, a cowboy, a biker and other characters who all embody a certain gaudy idea of masculine success. Las Vegas, the band's hometown and the capital of American excess, is the perfect stage for it. The city that sells fantasy and fortune is where the young Brandon Flowers learned to dream big, and it is where the older one returns to gently mock those dreams.

Critics largely embraced the single. Many reviewers described it as the band's boldest and most playful work in years, praising the groove and the wit, and it has since become a staple of their live shows. When The Killers headlined the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury in 2019, more than a decade after their first headline slot there, "The Man" sat alongside the older hits as proof that the band could still write a track with the same instant charge as their debut-era classics. Watching tens of thousands of people in a Somerset field sing a song about the folly of arrogance back at the man who wrote it is a very Killers kind of paradox.

The song also helped reposition the band. Wonderful Wonderful showed The Killers as grown-ups: still flamboyant, still in love with big choruses, but now capable of reflection, regret and vulnerability. It paved the way for 2020's Imploding the Mirage and 2021's Pressure Machine, the latter a quiet, deeply personal record about Flowers' small-town Utah upbringing. In hindsight, "The Man" was the hinge where the band turned from performing confidence to examining it.

Why It Still Resonates Today

Part of the reason "The Man" endures is simple: it sounds fantastic. The groove is timeless, the hook lands instantly, and there are few songs better at making a room feel taller. It works at a party, on a playlist, in a stadium, and it has become a go-to track for anyone who needs a hit of self-belief.

But the deeper reason is that its subject has not gone away. If anything, the image of the self-made, unbeatable alpha male has become louder in the years since 2017, amplified by social media, online influencers and a whole economy of performative confidence. Against that backdrop, "The Man" feels almost prophetic. It understands why that persona is seductive; it practically sells it to you. And then it asks, without preaching, whether that image has anything to do with being a good partner, father or friend.

There is also something universal in the song's central gesture: looking back at a younger version of yourself and wincing. Almost everyone has a version of "Brandon from 2005", the person who was so sure of everything, who said the clever, cutting thing, who thought success was the same as worth. Flowers does not disown that person. He gives him a spotlight, a great outfit and a killer bass line, then lets the audience see through him. It is a generous kind of self-criticism, one that feels honest because it still remembers how good the swagger felt.

That balance, joy and reckoning in the same breath, is why "The Man" keeps finding new listeners. Some come for the strut. Some stay for the self-awareness. The best moments come when you get both.

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