This rock formation from Nashville consists of the three Followill brothers and their cousin, and broke through worldwide with the album Only By The Night. Meanwhile, seven albums have been released.
The three Followill brothers, Nathan (drums), Caleb (vocals) and Jared (bass), grew up in a religious family. Father Leon is a preacher; together they travelled through the southern United States from church to church. Within the faith, there was no place for (pop) music; they only listened to church choirs they heard along the way. The boys' lives changed drastically when their father withdrew from the church and divorced their mother. The brothers moved to Nashville where, a year later, together with their cousin Matthew (guitar), they founded Kings Of Leon.
Youth and Young Manhood
The debut album Youth and Young Manhood (2003) did particularly well in England. The same goes for the second album Aha Shake Heartbreak from 2004. In America, they gained more recognition by supporting U2 on tour. At the end of 2006, Because of the Times was released, and the fourth album Only By The Night came out two years later. The album went thirteen times platinum and twice gold worldwide and is our Sunday Morning Classic of 1 October 2023.
Top 2000
In the 23rd edition of the Top 2000 (we are now living in the opening year of De Platenbar, 2023), Kings of Leon are listed with the following entries:
Sunday Morning Classic
As previously mentioned, Kings of Leon were on our Sunday Morning Classics stage on 1 October 2023 with their 4th studio album Only By The Night. Kings Of Leon; another band that suddenly caught my attention, even though they've been around for a while.
To get straight to the point: the first four songs of Only By The Night together form the most stunning quarter of an hour of American guitar rock I've heard in recent years (!). And no, that doesn't mean I've been on another planet all those years. But still: the Followill family gained another fan. I've now been spending several years with Only By The Night, and that's no easy feat. As said, those first four songs are indisputably brilliant. Take the ghostly creeping and powerfully drum-driven opener Closer, which immediately gives big brother Caleb all the space to do what he decided to do on Only By The Night: sing. As in: s-i-n-g, full of soul and if necessary with six capital letters. Chillingly good. But also the protest song Crawl, prickly and unpolished in word and sound, hits mercilessly. Sex On Fire and Use Somebody are less quirky but still among the best songs Kings have ever recorded. After such a thunderous opening salvo, you think it can only get worse. And it does. From the sugary Manhattan onwards, tensionless rock ballads (with or without a lazy southern sauce) suddenly take over, with Revelry and the cringeworthy 17 (‘ooh, she’s only seventee-een!’) as low points. In the closer Cold Desert, form is briefly regained, but the magic has long been strangled. Diagnosis? I'd say: even more ‘mature’ than it already was on Because Of The Times, somewhat overdone now and on the way to becoming a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (or Pearl Jam, for that matter) of the pre-Obama era. They have my blessing. Their finest moment – even if it only lasted a quarter of an hour – is currently on repeat here.
I consider this album the best work Kings of Leon have delivered so far. Rightly a Sunday Morning Classic!
Source: npo, OOR and Wikipedia Photo: Corentin LAMY and Raph_PH
