The Killers’ Mr Brightside becomes biggest song to never reach UK No 1

The Killers’ Brandon Flowers performing at Glastonbury festival in 2019. Photograph: Richard Isaac/Rex/Shutterstock

The Killers’ Mr Brightside, already the longest-running Top 100 hit in UK chart history, has been named the biggest song on record not to reach No 1.

Currently in its 408th week in the chart at No 71 and still being streamed by the British public 1.8m times a week, Mr Brightside – which has become a much-chanted staple at boozy weddings, karaoke nights and cheesy club nights – has overtaken Oasis’s Wonderwall as the most successful single not to reach No 1, with 5.57m chart sales (including 1.066m actual sales and 530,340,000 streams).

Mr Brightside was first released in 2003 in a run of 500 singles by British indie label Lizard King. The band had their breakthrough the following year with UK No 3 hit Somebody Told Me, and the re-released Mr Brightside reached No 10. It has never reached any higher than that, but buoyed by the gradual shift to streaming, it has barely been out of the charts since mid-2020.

The band said: “This award means a lot to us, Mr Brightside has been completely embraced by the British public and we can’t wait to celebrate with you all on the road.”

Overtaking Wonderwall is a poignant moment, given that Oasis were the central inspiration for Mr Brightside. “I wanted to write an answer to Don’t Look Back in Anger, which is a strange aspiration for a 20-year-old,” frontman Brandon Flowers told the Guardian in 2019.

Mr Brightside has a lovesick Flowers imagining a lover going to bed with another man, and trying to put a brave face on it: the optimist of the title line. It was written after a breakup with the woman Flowers had seen an Oasis gig with. “The wound was raw,” he said, “so it was cathartic for me. There was still something really romantic about it: it was before phones. I actually put pen to paper and we were able to turn that into something universal. To make betrayal sound so good was just a lucky thing that I stumbled upon.”

Following the Killers and Oasis in the ranking of the most successful non-No 1s is John Legend, whose open-hearted piano ballad All of Me is another wedding staple – though more for walking down the aisle than slipping over on the dancefloor.

Hozier’s Take Me to Church and the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York round out the top five, followed by Ed Sheeran’s Castle on the Hill, Vance Joy’s Riptide (another song that only reached No 10), Bastille’s Pompeii, Passenger’s Let Her Go and George Ezra’s Budapest.

The Killers are gearing up to tour their latest greatest hits collection, Rebel Diamonds, around the UK from 18 June.