Booing & Walkouts At The Killers Show In GeorgiaAfter Saying Russian Is Their Brother

[RAMROD 104,982]

The Killers have apologised after lead singer Brandon Flowers was booed for bringing a Russian fan onstage at a concert in Georgia – the former Soviet state that Russia invaded in 2008 – and urging the crowd to think of each other as “brothers and sisters”.

Towards the end of the concert, held on Tuesday night in Batumi, Georgia, the band invited a man to play drums with them during the song For Reasons Unknown.

“We don’t know the etiquette of this land but this guy’s a Russian,” Flowers can be heard telling the crowd, who responded with a mixture of cheers and boos. “You OK with a Russian coming up here?”

After the song, Flowers addressed the incident to further boos from concertgoers. “You can’t recognise if someone’s your brother? He’s not your brother?” he asked. “We all separate on the borders of our countries? … Am I not your brother, being from America?”

Flowers continued, urging the audience to celebrate “that we’re here together”.

“I don’t want it to turn ugly,” he said. “And I see you as my brothers and my sisters.”

Many people reportedly left the stadium in protest, though according to the user-sourced concert database Setlist.fm, The Killers played through to the end of their show.

Russia continues to occupy 20% of Georgian territory after its invasion in 2008. Since 2022 and the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine, there has been an influx of Russians to Georgia, which gained independence from Soviet rule in 1991. Some Russians have faced a backlashinside, including Russian cruise ship arrivals being hounded.

“Good people of Georgia, it was never our intention to offend anyone!” the group later wrote in a statement. “We have a longstanding tradition of inviting people to play drums and it seemed from the stage that the initial response from the crowd indicated that they were okay with tonight’s audience participation member.”

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/16/booing-and-walkouts-after-the-killers-tell-georgia-audience-russian-is-their-brother

[bionic 43,829]

12 minutes ago, RAMROD said:

After the song, Flowers addressed the incident to further boos from concertgoers. “You can’t recognise if someone’s your brother? He’s not your brother?” he asked. “We all separate on the borders of our countries? … Am I not your brother, being from America?”

Typical Mormon 'I know best' mindset. Its why I stopped being a fan

[River 106,422]

This mindset that everyone are brothers and sisters is so idiotic

[Knife 6,665]

Talk about not reading the room. That's seriously embarrassing.

[LilyLark 9,928]

People on twitter pointed out this whole thing could have been avoided if the band had a) simply done some basic research and b) didn't bring someone up on stage.

If I was an artist about to perform in a foreign country, I'd spend 30 minutes googling and reading up on what's going on. I already knew about the tensions between Russians who fled Russia to Georgia considering the occupation back in 2008 (and they had invaded other areas besides the two other regions, but withdrew from some of those areas). But I was curious and googled to see what's out there, and when you google...there are a million stories on the tensions. So there's no excuse on their part.

[Starmie25 13,986]

For years now they've toured the globe and would select a fan from the audience to drum during "For Reasons Unknown" song FYI.

[edengowon 9,958]

yeah something like this could be attempted in a certain few countries, perhaps in certain places in the us or western europe where people do seem to share that 'we're all people' mindset. but in georgia... a country that's been directly invaded by russia in the past 20 years, still has huge chunks of its territory occupied by russian puppet states and has serious conflict over russian political interference to this day... yeah an incredibly stupid, disrespectful and downright bad idea.