10 Perfect Albums That No One Saw Coming

From the minute that most of us heard Hot Fuss, the Killers had turned into one of the greatest bands that the '80s never spat out. As much as something like Mr. Brightside has become a '00s anthem for a lot of people, there was still always a part of their sound that was left behind in the MTV generation, with different layers of synthesizers piling on just the right amount of melodrama to reach into your heart. This was the second album though, and the Killers wanted to get a little closer to the bone.

During the process of making Sam's Town, Brandon Flowers had become more and more infatuated with the work of Bruce Springsteen, and you can really hear that heartland sound across this album. For a band that was proclaiming their love for the sounds of the Cure and The Smiths just a few years before, they may as well have told us that they were reinventing themselves as a punk outfit. Sam's Town still managed to work though, and that power came from the songs we were working with.

Even though the setting had changed, Brandon frames every one of these stories the exact same way, getting down the right amount of details and leaving out a few so the listener can bring their own experience into the mix. This may not have been the sequel that we were necessarily asking for, but the sounds of this record may have been a lot better for our souls in the long run.