Brandon Flowers of The Killers knows why his band is not more successful. In a recent chat with NME, he said The Killers suffer from a "lack of drive." That is some harsh criticism considering they have two platinum albums under their belt with Hot Fuzz and Sam's Town, as well as strong releases with Day & Age and Battle Born. Flowers cites U2 as a band who was more in tune with their time and generation.
"There's definitely a drive that we're lacking," Flowers said. "It takes a lot of work and that's fine, everybody's different, everybody's gonna have their own road that they go down. Other than Coldplay I'm not sure anybody's made the dent that U2 were able to make. They were so much a part of the landscape and the timing of when they were coming out."
That is a tough comparison. U2's first album came out in 1980 during an era that relied heavily on albums. Hot Fuzz was released in 2004 in the midst of a still-changing landscape.
"It's changed so much now, there's so much music out there and so much noise to compete with, it's strange times. So sometimes it's frustrating with four different people and four different personalities in this band, we don't have that whole history that U2 have of these four young kids that knew each other and grew up in the same town," he added.
Flowers also said the follow-up to 2012's Battle Born will be a departure from what fans are used to hearing from the band:
"Even though I'm still young, you can start to get set in your ways. Change is good and there's always growth, I'm always looking for that."
In case you missed it, The Killers dropped a Christmas single recently with "Joel, the Lump of Coal."
