"My Own Soul's Warning" by The Killers: Is Brandon Flowers Springsteen's Biological Son?
A fair question:
do Bruce Springsteen and Brandon Flowers share DNA?
The Killers newest single “My Own Soul’s Warning” was released this past week, and it’s absolutely impossible to listen to it without finding these intertwined, connected sounds that make you feel like you’re rocking stone-washed jeans at a Springsteen show in 1986.
I wish I was the first to discover the similarities but it looks like Brandon Flowers has already discovered the Springsteen sound for himself, as he told NME in January when talking about the new song “Dying Breed”:
“It somehow captures Manchester and Bruce Springsteen. I think that’s when we’re at our best, when we’re able to take these different elements and make them work.”
That’s clearly orphaned-rock star speak for “Dad, I’m here – is that you, pop? It’s me, papa Bruce. Can we have a catch?”
Alright, first off, Brandon Flowers rocks a fake cowboy hat way better than Diplo. Brandon Flowers at least goes to the thrift store for his hats, then maybe spends a nice Friday evening dressing them up with a glue gun and sequins. Diplo’s cowboy vibe is like, he removed his cowboy hat from a machine using a claw.
Now that we have the fake cowboy debate out of the way, let me make a case.
For 16 years, since the birth of that wondrous glob of Las Vegas color that was “Hot Fuss”, Brandon Flowers has fronted a sound that is enormous. The productions echo with gloss and power like every verse was sung in a Roman coliseum. Swagger grows its electric tentacles and permeates every song, sometimes purposefully, like on “The Man”, and sometimes just because it comes that damn natural. And his stage presence?
Brandon is the Weary Traveler. He is the Bombastic Gambler. He is the Rustic. He is the Flash. He is the American on the road and on the dirt trail. He stands with one leather-booted foot atop a floor speaker, opens his hand, and 40,000 people do as he commands. He is a man’s embodiment of soul sound.
Does that description fit anyone else?
Yes, it sounds like Brandon’s dad, Bruce Springsteen.
I’m not the first to contemplate whether The Killers sound like Bruce Springsteen. It’s not a new opinion. What “My Own Soul’s Warning” has sparked in me is the simple and completely rational assertion that Brandon Flowers sings with the soul of a bottle-nosed dolphin because he is the biological brood of The Boss.
We’ll just conveniently ignore the “evidence” against this claim, like the song “Dustland Fairytale” by the Killers, a song exclusively about the long and dramatic romance of Brandon’s parents.
Let’s explore the science of it.
Bruce was born in September of ’49, or if you have a slightly broader view of the universe, Bruce is a timeless ventricle of the beating American heart and has never not been alive. Brandon Flowers was born in June of ’81, meaning he was conceived in September of ’80.
What was Bruce Springsteen up to in September of 1980? Let’s check it out. He was…dating actress Joyce Hyser. Okay, not helpful. He was just getting ready to kick off The River Tour on October 3rd in Ann Arbor. Kills the “wild lusty fling on the road” narrative timeline. Ah-hah!
According to the Bruce Springsteen Brucebase superfan wiki, in September of 1980, Bruce and the E Street band spent the end of the month rehearsing for the tour in Lititz, PA, spending up to 10 hours a day in the studio from 4 pm to 2 am. Bruce is really not giving me much to work with for the midnight conception of a future arena rock superstar.
Let’s try it from Brandon’s end. Youngest of six kids (allegedly), born in Henderson, Nevada (allegedly), grew up as a Las Vegas Mormon, primed for the big stage. Of course, he would throw out the classic “Las Vegas Mormon” cover story to throw investigative journalists off the trail.
Brandon grew up wanting to emulate the Smiths, spent his childhood split between Las Vegas and Utah, and any long-lost father-son melodrama momentum shattered when Bruce and Brandon already met in 2009, where Flowers was invited on stage in the Netherlands to giddily perform with Springsteen on “Thunder Road.”
Okay, so Brandon Flowers isn’t a made-under-the-sound-stage-scaffolding tour love baby. He’s The Man, and Bruce is The Boss, and any children Bruce made in September of 1980 didn’t produce the introspective thumping road song/heart journey that is “My Own Soul’s Warning”.
The security guard in the parking lot of a sold-out stadium on the Born to Run tour may have heard the thumping drums, the booming echo of Bruce Springsteen’s voice, felt that nostalgic tingle in his loins like he knew he was captured on the outer fringes of a memory. The guy outside a 2021 Killers concert may hear the same thing.
Inside, those people will be a sponge for sound, as it moves right through them. What they will feel is the man on stage in purple leather, maybe a cowboy hat, holding them in the palm of his hand. What they will know is, “this is what a Killers show is supposed to sound like”.
That’s what you know when you hear “My Own Soul’s Warning”. It’s not a bigger sound than “Day and Age”, it’s not more anthemic than “Battle Born”, but it is a Killers song.
You can be a security guard in the parking lot, and hear the interchangeable residue of two titans of American Rock, or you can hear it from the inside:
Brandon Flowers in a power stance channeling the evolution of a single soul through a microphone – his own.
Artist Links:
The Killers website
The Killers Insta
Bruce Springsteen website
Songs by Springsteen to get you bothered:
Obviously, there are 10,000 middle-aged dads with their own opinions, so we’ll just throw down one:
The Ghost of Tom Joad
Songs by The Killers to get you bothered:
Shot at the Night
On Top
I Can Change