“Looking for the answer: are we human or are we dancer?”. The question that the thousands of spectators under the spotlight of BBK Live had been waiting for hours, days, months. The Killers took the stage surrounded by a crowd that more than sang, vibrated with their songs. As if it were a constant drip, after making the public wait for 20 minutes that seemed like an eternity, the members of the Las Vegas band appeared out of the mist, until a Brandon Flowers with an impeccable blue-black suit and a smile that Not a second was erased, he appeared on the scene. “Bilbao, bizirik gaude!”, he reminded the public in Basque that “we are alive”, and if they did not feel that way at that first moment, in the next hour Flowers himself would be in charge of resurrecting them.
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‘When you were Young’ and ‘Bones’ did not take long to sound in the mouth of the singer who went from one end of the stage to the other without stopping except to play the piano that was hidden behind an illuminated and giant infinity in the center of the clue. Flowers knows the public of him, respects him and interacts. He asks for claps, jumps and choirs. He doesn’t blink when a stuffed animal is thrown at him, he catches it on the fly and displays it like a trophy. With his fist raised as a fight, raised as if it were a Superman or putting his hand to his chest, he was close in a BBK Live that he already saw in 2017, but that he needed to relive it, and more after a long pandemic that still seems not to end. “It’s been a long time,” he acknowledged in English. “Somos The Killers”, he introduced himself after the sixth song, despite not needing any introduction.
The staging of lights and smoke was capable of transporting those present to any part of the world, but above all, to the group’s home: Las Vegas. Images of the big casinos, the endless highways or the arid desert of the southwestern United States crossed the giant screen until they were implanted in Bilbao. As the songs lived, Flowers tried to fight against the fatigue that was causing him the emotion that was palpable in the environment.
A short break later, in which the public did not stop screaming for a second, rescued him on stage without the elegant suit jacket and with a towel around his neck, a sign of his humility, he recognized that the years do not pass in vain . Something that the public did not care about and neither did he, who soon took over the dance floor and the band, who remained motionless at the back of the stage. Dave Keuning’s brilliant plucking saved him from being loved even though he practically didn’t look up from the guitar and the floor throughout the show. Only at the end did he get excited with the public, to whom he launched the plectrum that made all his solos in the concert possible.
An energetic and inimitable Ronnie Vannucci Jr. proved to be the heart of the band and Flowers’ salvation when the intensity of the moment got the best of him. He scared the moment in which, without having sung some of his greatest hits, he threw his drumsticks into the audience as a sign that the concert was over. However, a few minutes and some water later he resumed his brilliant performance on the drums with which he was guiding the public: if he stopped, everyone was silent, even when he ordered. For a moment, Vannuci Jr. became the owner and lord of the festival, which respected his silences, but enjoyed his contagious rhythms much more.
Leaving the best for last is a classic, not only in concerts, and it was not going to be less in the performance of The Killers. By that time, the public had already fallen at the feet of Flowers, whom they encouraged and praised with incessant shouts. The moment everyone was waiting for has arrived. Giant letters on the screen asked the band’s most anticipated question: “Are we human?” And then the magic. The entire audience without exception knew it, shouted, jumped, danced. As strange as it may seem, the second part of the song was the moment in which the fewest cell phones were seen recording. After having recorded the beginning -obviously, it is a moment that should be shown on Instagram and Tiktok- the vast majority of those present did something almost unheard of: put away the mobile phone to live that moment.
Anyone who listens to the most famous song of one of their favorite groups at the obvious end of their concert can come to think that “that’s it, that’s all”. But not. There was still The Killers for a while. And so, the public traveled to space with ‘Spaceman’ and returned to earth with ‘Mr. Brightside’.
After the last chord and the farewell, in which there were kisses in the air and a cascade of “love you”, the audience returned to the silence caused by knowing that everything is over, but not without remembering forever having witnessed the performance. in which The Killers showed that time does not pass in vain, but that it improves life and that, after a long pause, whether due to a pandemic or the need to catch some breath, the best can come. Because yes, those of us who were there were human and came back to life.
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