Songfacts®:

• The next time somebody tells you how much better it was before dating apps when you could just meet people in a club, play them "Somebody Told Me" by The Killers. The song is a look inside the mind of a young man laden with testosterone and libido, frustrated by the fruitless search for female companionship in the club scene. The chorus simulates one of those nonsensical, maddening conversations that takes place over the throbbing music:
  
  Well somebody told me you had a boyfriend
  Who looked like a girlfriend
  That I had in February of last year
  
  "We were going out to clubs a lot at the time," Killers frontman Brandon Flowers told Entertainment Weekly. "It speaks to a young man's frustration, the difficulty of picking up girls."
• "Somebody Told Me" is one of the earliest Killers songs, and in America it was their first single. The group formed in Las Vegas in 2001 but signed to a UK record label, which released "Mr. Brightside" as their first single there in 2003. It had little impact, but "Somebody Told Me" was the second single and the Brits loved it - the song went to #3 in the UK. So around the summer of 2004 The Killers got a deal with Island Records to distribute their music in America, and "Somebody Told Me" was the first single. It underwhelmed, topping out at #51 in November 2024, but "Mr. Brightside" was released next and put them on the map with a peak position of #10 in June 2005. By this time their debut album, Hot Fuss, had been out about a year.
  
  This long period when The Killers were making noise in the UK but little-known in their home country was a formative time; they got really good on the stage and in the studio, so when their star turn came, they were ready.
• Hey, isn't Brandon Flowers a Mormon? Wouldn't that preclude him from being in the clubs trying to pick up girls?
  
  Yes, Flowers is Mormon, but in the Killers' early years he didn't adhere to their tenets and participated in the rock and roll lifestyle to some extent - he was a drinker but didn't do drugs or entertain groupies. Flowers became a practicing Mormon after his first child was born in 2007, and since then he's been a spokesperson for the faith, even appearing in an "I'm a Mormon" ad campaign.
  
  That didn't stop him from performing "Somebody Told Me." The song remains a staple of their setlists and a consistent crowd-pleaser.
• "Somebody Told Me" is a band composition, one of the few Killers songs where all four members share songwriting credits.
• Check out the bass in this song, courtesy of Killer Mark Stoermer. Brandon Flowers called it one of his "greatest moments on the bass."
• Flowers talked about the song's musical inspiration in a 2013 chat with NME: "I was 20, 21, and just trying to write about what I was doing and seeing in these nightclubs in Vegas. I was listening to Pulp and David Bowie, trying to channel all of that stuff."