Mr Brightside becomes the UK’s top track to never hit number one

Iconic 2003 track Mr Brightside by the Killers has usurped Wonderwall by British band Oasis as the longest-running song in the UK top 100 chart without ever actually claiming the number one spot.

According to the Official Charts Company, Mr Brightside’s 5.57 million combined sales and streams also makes it the UK’s third biggest song of all time.

The Las Vegas band’s dancefloor filler even surpasses sales and streams by Wham!’s festive anthem, Last Christmas.

The song has a total of 530.3 million streams – 100 paid streams or 600 free streams equal one “sale” – and has sold 1.1 million copies in the more than 20 years since its initial release.

Mr Brightside has spent an eye-watering 408 weeks – seven years – in the UK top 100.

Its closest competitor is Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved, which trails behind at 234 weeks in the top 100.

Brandon Flowers, who wrote the iconic track with bandmate Dave Keuning, told the Official Charts Company that he now feels like the song is not even theirs.

“It’s funny. I don’t feel so much of it anymore. It just exists in the world,” Flowers said.

“It’s amazing that I had something to do with it, but I almost feel a little bit removed from it because it’s so big.”

The enduring track is still being streamed 1.8 million times per week by Britons.

There is no sign of it slowing, either, with last year representing the track’s biggest year of streams, with 79.97 million plays.

In 2024, Mr Brightside is accelerating further still with average combined weekly sales and streams up 23% year-on-year.

The song’s biggest week to date in the UK was July 2019, when it clocked up 17,700 chart units following the band’s headline Glastonbury set.

2012 was Mr Brightside’s biggest year of pure sales when it was bought and downloaded 125,200 times.

Official Charts table showing Mr Brightside’s success (Official Charts/PA)

On his first indication of the song’s impact, 42-year-old Flowers said: “The John Peel stage at Glastonbury (in 2004).

“We’d been coming to the UK and had some great experiences, but we’d been away for a little while. We came back, and when we played that song something had obviously happened. A change had happened.

“Something shifted in the way that the audience physically responded, and it set us off on this path to become the live band that we are now.”

He told Rolling Stone that a video of the track and his performance in 2004 “went off”, adding: “It looked like footage of the Sex Pistols!”

Flowers told Spin back in 2015 that he is proud that Mr Brightside has “stood the test of time”.

“I never get bored of singing it,” he said.