Thursday Tunes: The Killers

January 19, 2012 | Miscellania

Put an asterix by this week’s Thursday Tunes, because the source I took it from may be a little questionable. In 2008, The Killers released their third studio album, Day and Age, and with it, the first single, “Human”. I admit, though I consider myself a Killers’ fan, I found this single and consequently the whole album a bit…curious. My main issue was the first few lines of the song “Are we human/ or are we dancer?”–it just never made any sense. Recently,I came across an interview from 2008 in which lead singer Brandon Flowers tried to give an explanation:

“It’s taken from a quote by [author Hunter S.] Thompson. … ‘We’re raising a generation of dancers,’ and I took it and ran. I guess it bothers people that it’s not grammatically correct, but I think I’m allowed to do whatever I want,”

Cockiness of Flowers aside, the issue came in when I actually tried to track down the Hunter S. Thompson quote referenced above. I couldn’t! I managed to find a message board that said it might come from Thompson’s eulogy to Jerry Garcia, but that was equally hard to track down. So is the quote genuine? I will leave the final judgements up to you.

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