Can't Deny My Love

Album: The Desired Effect (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • The first single from The Desired Effect, this was written by Flowers and produced by Vampire Weekend and Haim producer Ariel Rechtshaid. Flowers debuted the song live during a gig at Mexico's Vive Latino music festival on March 14, 2015.
  • Brandon Flowers (from NME): "'Can't Deny My Love' was one of those magical songs that just writes themselves. The lyrics were down really fast. There was something instantly authentic about it. That was cool. It wasn't contrived at all. Arial was able to bring a little weight and muscle to my original demo."
  • The video was shot in the Nevada desert with actress Evan Rachel Wood and Richard Butler, the vocalist of The Psychedelic Furs. Flowers came up with his own treatment, adapting Young Goodman Brown, a short story by 19th-century American writer Nathanial Hawthorne. "I read it recently, Flowers told Radio.com. "I got a book of classic American short stories. Just when we finished 'Can't Deny My Love,' I had just read it. I thought it would be great to just adapt it with the music. "

    Originally, a high profile director was attached to the project. "The idea was to have it be more true to the story and have it be in the woods in the Northeast, but that did not work out," said Flowers. "M. Night Shyamalan was supposed to do it, but it just didn't work out."

    "So in the last second we had to turn it around because we were running out of time," he continued. "Robert Schober, who has worked with Disturbed and the Killers (the band's 2013 video 'Shot in the Night'), did it in the Mojave desert in-between Las Vegas and L.A., a small ghost town called Calico, right outside of Barstow, California."
  • Brandon Flowers penned this with his drummer friend Darren Beckett. The Killers told The Sun that he is proud to finally write a song that reminds him of Depeche Mode. "I'm a huge Depeche Mode fan and absorb so much of their music but I never write songs in a minor key," he said. That was a first for me so I emailed (Depeche Mode songwriter) Martin Gore to say that finally I'd written a decent song in a minor key. That song is very up their alley and he said he is very excited to hear it."

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