Songfacts®:

• Killers frontman Brandon Flowers wrote this song while his mother, Jean, was battling cancer. The lyrics are very abstract, but they tell the story of how his mother and father met when they were both 15 and living in the same trailer park. "It was an attempt to better understand my dad, who is sometimes a mystery to me," Flowers posted on his social media accounts. "To grieve for my mother. To acknowledge their sacrifices and maybe even catch a glimpse of just how strong love needs to be to make it in this world. It was my therapy. It was cathartic."
  
  Jean Flowers died in 2010 at 64.
• Flowers told Rolling Stone magazine that this song started out "just kind of ripping off" the Velvet Underground song "Waiting for the Man." He said, "I guess it's the most like Sam's Town on the album."
• Flowers told The Quietus why he wrote a song about his mom and dad. He explained: "It's an attempt to come to grips with the fact that they're getting older. I'm quite young for them - I was a mistake, heh heh. They're in their mid 60s, and my dad is my connection to the pure America. Yes, I pray every day. It's like a love letter I guess. I see what's happening now with the kids, and…it was just simpler back then. There's so much junk now."
• In 2021, Bruce Springsteen joined The Killers to rework this song as "Dustland." It all started when Brandon Flowers got a text in February 2020 from an unknown sender that read:
  
  "We gotta do Dustland one day. - Bruce"
  
  Figuring it just might be that Bruce, Flowers texted Springsteen's son, Evan (whom he's friends with), and verified that it did indeed come from Bruce Springsteen.
  
  COVID-19 put it on hold, but they eventually got together for the song. Flowers posted: "Bruce has written a lot about people like my parents and found a whole lot of beauty in otherwise invisible people's hopes and dreams. Their struggles, and their losses. I'm grateful to him for opening this door for me. I'm grateful to my parents for their example to me."