After bursting onto the scene in 2004 with the release of ‘Somebody Told Me’ and their debut album ‘Hot Fuss’, The Killers have endeared themselves to music lovers across the UK, growing to headline V Festival and Hard Rock Calling over recent years. Saturday 22nd June 2013 marked another significant date for the Las Vegas rock quartet, with the performance of their biggest-ever standalone show in front of 78,000 people, inside Wembley Stadium.
With a sell-out crowd heading to London and the atmosphere beginning to build, support acts James and the Gaslight Anthem opened the evening by delivering confident and engaging cameos, perfectly hitting the mark ahead of the performance set to be delivered by The Killers.
As the clock hit 9pm, The Killers emerged to the sound of ‘When You Were Young’, Brandon Flowers owning the stage and looking every inch the rock front-man in his leather jacket. With the two-hour set now in full flow, the classics kept on coming, blasting out ‘Spaceman’, ‘Smile Like You Mean It’, ‘Somebody Told Me’, ‘Read My Mind’ and ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’, along with many more. The sound of ‘Human’ soon had the crowd jumping (Wembley, it appears, is dancer) in time for a couple of tracks from the new ‘Battle Born’ album.
The incredible ‘Mr. Brightside’ is usually the highlight of any show by The Killers, but here it was upstaged by the ‘Wembley Song’, written specifically for the event; even including lyrics to honour the 1966 World Cup winners (which is met with an unmistakable roar!). A touch of class highlighting the band’s ability to command the largest of stages.
Nobody could have summarised the evening more perfectly than Brandon Flowers himself. After listing off the acts who have previously graced the Wembley venue – everyone from Whitney Houston to the Rolling Stones – he added “Tonight, you can put our name on that list!”. To me, this night saw The Killers realise their dream of becoming one of the world’s biggest bands… a night that will live long in the memory of everybody who was lucky enough to be there.