Sam's Town is the second studio album by American rock band the Killers. It was released on September 27, 2006, by Island Records. Regarding the album, frontman Brandon Flowers noted that he "wanted to create an album that captured, chronologically, everything important that got me to where I am today".[2]Sam's Town has sold almost five million copies worldwide.
On October 7, 2016, Sam's Town was reissued as a remastered double vinyl by Bong Load Records, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the album. The reissue is limited to 5,016 copies and includes two bonus tracks—the previously unreleased demo "Peace of Mind" and a Pet Shop Boys remix of "Read My Mind".[3][4]
Background
The album takes its name from Sam's Town Hotel and Gambling Hall, a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, the band's hometown. Sam's Town was also a huge sign that was visible to band member Mark Stoermer through his room window when he was young.
Artwork
According to photographer Anton Corbijn, the band initially wanted a "chic, gypsy look" for the album, and that "out of those discussions [for the sleeve] came these elements of faded glory."[5] The album's co-producer, Flood, is dressed as a Native American in the CD booklet. The artwork inside the album booklet is taken from a Downtown Las Vegas mural painted by Suzanne Hackett-Morgan, a local painter. The cover artwork of Sam's Town features model and singer Felice LaZae.[6]
Flowers later said of production techniques used on the record, "We didn't use too many vocal effects. On the first album, we used auto-tune, and I didn't even realize what was going on with these machines and the computer. I was adamant about not using it this time. You really hear what my voice sounds like, for the first time."[10] At one point, Flowers was told that Brian Eno had passed over the chance to produce the album, a rejection that affected Brandon greatly. However, when working with Eno for Wonderful Wonderful, Eno told him that he was never offered the project in the first place.[11]
Christian Hoard of Rolling Stone gave the Killers' concert at Madison Square Garden three-and-a-half stars, saying, "The Vegas quartet's maligned new album, Sam's Town, might pack more unfortunate big-rock bombast than its new wave debut, Hot Fuss, but it shares a generous hook quotient and a Vegas-y talent for crowd-pleasing. Before a frothy crowd, the Killers proved they've become a tight live band."[12]
Sam's Town received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 64, based on 32 reviews.[13]
Dan Martin of The Observer awarded the album five out of five stars and noted the album's sonic similarity to Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, writing: "Improbably, this proves to be their masterstroke. Selling Springsteen back to his homeland might look like a canny way of ensuring radio play, but there's no disputing the quality of their songs. Indeed, as Hot Fuss sporadically intimated, the Killers are among pop's foremost practitioners." Comparing Sam's Town to the band's debut album Hot Fuss, Martin stated: "Crucially, Sam's Town sounds like a complete collection, with a far better strike rate than its predecessor."[24]
In a review for NME, Krissi Murison highlighted both the similarities to Hot Fuss and the evolution of the band's sound from the debut to Sam's Town, concluding: "All this, however, isn't to say that The Killers have gone all (God forbid) serious on us. The tunes may be huger, the influences cleverer, the lyrics more adventurous and the band more self-assured, but their primary concern is still being the biggest indie-pop stars on the planet. For all their smart new ways, The Killers are still as flashy, unintentionally funny, and flagrantly affected as ever – and this time we wouldn't even pretend to have it any other way."[19]
Conversely, Sia Michel of The New York Times called the album "painful" and ends the review with the statement that "The Killers are a talented band that evolved too fast, for the wrong reasons."[25] Similarly, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone noted a significant departure from Hot Fuss, writing that on Sam's Town, the band "ditch[es] their cheerfully fake Bowie moves and try to get heavy by copying Bruce Springsteen. Yes, that means glockenspiel solos. Yes, it means anthems about the road and looking for America and girls named Mary. No, it's not a good move."[22][26]
In later years, the album gained a cult following and has been critically lauded as a classic and one of the best rock albums of the 2000s.[27][28][29][30] Despite its two-star rating by Rolling Stone, Sam's Town was voted by the magazine's readers in December 2009 as the most underrated album of the decade.[28]Q magazine ranked it as the 11th best album of the 21st century.[29] In a retrospective for Uproxx, Steven Hyden broaches the issue of pannings by notable media outlets such as Rolling Stone, arguing that these pannings have ultimately cemented the album's status as a classic: "Ten years removed from its original moment, Sam's Town has aged as all misunderstood sorta-classics do, where its deficiencies are now strengths. [...] A record that was risible to some because its attendant hype was so overbearing now has the appeal of a mistreated underdog. Against all odds, the narrative came around on Sam's Town."[30] Writing for MTV News, James Montgomery would theorize that the initial backlash to the album caused the band to change direction with their follow up album, Day & Age, calling the latter "the most un-Sam's Town album imaginable."[31]
Most Underrated Album of the Decade: Readers' Poll
2010
1
"They really changed as writers from Hot Fuss to this. It was about America: the idea that there is an idealism to being young in America but it can all so easily fade away. It's about the guy in the small town – the backbone of America. Brandon Flowers caught a classic American vision, which is amazing because all his references were European or British. He's a great writer. He's got a very old head on young shoulders." – Jon Bon Jovi[32]
Commercial performance
Sam's Town debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200, selling 315,000 copies in its first week.[33] As of July 2008[update], the album had sold 1.3 million copies in the United States.[34] It became the band's second number-one album on the UK Albums Chart, selling 268,946 copies in its first week.[35] It had sold 1.57 million copies in the United Kingdom by July 2017.[36] The album has been certified Platinum or multi-Platinum in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Ireland. Sam's Town also produced multiple charting singles including the platinum chart-topping single "When You Were Young". As of August 2016[update], Sam's Town had sold almost five million copies worldwide.[37]
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