![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/The-Killers-2023-Anton-Corbijn-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ Anton Corbijn)<\/p>\n
Sun 10 August 2025 5:00, UK <\/p>\n
Ever wonder where your favourite band got their name from? <\/p>\n
There are some which sound virtually nonsensical, and you have to question how acts like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard<\/a> ever managed to get their feet off the ground with a preposterously wordy moniker, let alone manage to not get bored of the novelty of having three unrelated rhyming words that they\u2019re now seemingly stuck having to repeat for eternity.<\/p>\n On the other hand, some just sound cool and roll off the tongue quite nicely, although they might have questionable backstories behind their origins. For example, Joy Division took their name from the Nazi-run brothels during World War II, and if you thought that they might have regretted attaching such negative connotations to their art, they only went and called their follow-up act New Order<\/a>, which, if it needs any explanation, still conjures up the same associations.<\/p>\n Of course, the band have wisely addressed this in the past in an attempt to reassure all potential fans that they have no ties to the far-right movement, but for some, an unwise choice of band name can leave a sickly taste lingering in the mouth. In more recent times, an ill-advised decision made by a Canadian post-punk band led to them calling themselves Viet Cong, which understandably upset those who had been directly affected by the heinous actions of the former South Vietnamese guerrilla army, and caused them to apologetically become known henceforth as Preoccupations.<\/p>\n It can\u2019t be easy finding the appropriate name to give to a musical project, and that\u2019s probably why there are so many acts that have committed cardinal sins when coming to this crucial decision. You can go for the banal like Dry Cleaning, or settle with a pun like Joanna Gruesome, and either way, it\u2019s going to piss someone off. However, the worst offenders have to be the \u2018The\u2019 bands, of which there have been a deluge since the dawn of time, with very few of them being any good.<\/p>\n With absolutely zero apologies to be made to The Who, The Band, or The The, whacking the definite article at the beginning of your band name, especially if you\u2019re trying to be clever about it, is not remotely interesting and should have been outlawed long ago. That being said, bands still choose to pick names of this ilk, and one notable example of one that has achieved considerable success in the 21st century is The Killers<\/a>.<\/p>\n For a sharp-dressed new wave group from Las Vegas, The Killers wouldn\u2019t have been my personal first port of call for a band name, but the origin of this name is perhaps more interesting than it first seems. Thankfully, it wasn\u2019t born out of an admiration for John Wayne Gacy, Ed Gein, or any other notorious criminals, but instead, it came, funnily enough, courtesy of New Order.<\/p>\n In 2001, the British dance-punk group released a music video for their song, \u2018Crystal\u2019, which featured a band of American youngsters miming along to the song. Printed on the front of the fictional group\u2019s bass drum, as is customary for any band wishing to remind their audience of who they are, was their name, which happened to be \u2018The Killers\u2019.<\/p>\n Evidently, Brandon Flowers and Co. thought that this would be an appropriate and attention-grabbing name to adopt as their own, and consequently, from then on, the \u2018Mr Brightside\u2019 band were known by this name. No, it isn\u2019t the greatest name of all time, but it appears to have worked for the band, seeing as they\u2019ve become one of the most beloved indie rock acts to have emerged in the last 25 years. What\u2019s more, it hasn\u2019t been misconstrued as offensive by quite as many people as New Order, and it\u2019s not as much of a nonsensical mouthful as Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. They kept it simple, and fair play to them.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Anton Corbijn) Sun 10 August 2025 5:00, UK Ever wonder where your favourite band…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,67034,119301,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-332626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-order","11":"tag-the-killers","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115003416180973548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}