Caleb, Nathan, and Jared Followill grew up in Talihina, Oklahoma. For much of their childhood they accompanied father Leon, a conservative Pentecostal preacher, across the southern USA. During this time they were rarely allowed to listen to secular music, but far from turning the three away it only fed their fascination.
When papa-Leon quit preaching in 1997 the brothers relocated to Nashville, recruited cousin Matthew Followill, and formed a band. Naming themselves Kings of Leon, at the time the group set their sights on country fame. Following some time trying and failing to land a record deal, KoL’s musical interests began drifting towards what we’d come to know as their sound. After moving to New York and seeing The White Stripes and The Strokes in action, the four realised they too wanted to be rock stars.
Their debut EP Holy Roller Novocaine and first album Youth And Young Manhood both arrived in 2003, blazing a trail to chart success and festival bills. Kings of Leon continued to evolve, branching out musically with each following release and embracing a range of musical styles.
In 2008 Kings of Leon delivered the era-defining album Only By The Night. While later releases have failed to match Only By The Night’s blockbuster success, the Southern outfit can’t be faulted in terms of creative ambition. As their most recent full-length When You See Yourself attests, the story is far from closed. Here are 10 of the group’s essential tracks.
1.‘Sex on Fire’, Only By The Night (2008)
Why beat around the bush? Kings of Leon’s Grammy decorated ‘Sex on Fire’ is without question their best-known song. The epic and slow-building stadium anthem apparently sprang from Caleb Followill’s drug-addled brain while recovering from a shoulder injury on prescription medication. Love, this song tells us, can be a painful and confusing thing. (And yes, it’s also about sex).
We’ve never gotten a decisive answer as to exactly what the song’s chorus means, though Caleb once suggested it was written as a temporary filler that never got replaced. Give it a Google though, and make up your own mind.
2.‘Molly’s Chambers’, Holy Roller Novocaine (2003)
When Kings of Leon recorded Holy Roller Novocaine the group’s youngest member, Jared, was only 15. With that in mind, the music video for ‘Molly’s Chambers’ reveals a band very much in the process of getting it together. Look no further than Caleb’s questionably groomed moustache for things that required some fine-tuning. While the studio recording of the group’s debut single may lack some of the impact of their later work, this simple garage rocker has reliably delivered live.
3.‘The Bucket’, Aha Shake Heartbreak (2005)
Another exceptional cut from the band’s early years – the song was written from the fictional perspective of the group’s former manager Ken Levitan. A modest hit in the UK, ‘The Bucket’ is considered by many to have kickstarted Kings of Leon’s career. According to Setlist.fm, it currently holds the record for the most played Kings of Leon song live. At the time of writing, the song has been performed by the band no fewer than 666 times. Nothing suss.
4.‘On Call’, Because Of The Times (2007)
‘On Call’ is an underrated single in the Kings of Leon catalogue. The 2007 release foreshadows much of the atmospheric and moody tone which came to define Only By The Night. The group has shared that after touring as an opening act for U2, Bob Dylan, and Pearl Jam in 2006 they were inspired to pursue a grander and more ambitious sound. “We had just bought land in Tennessee with this old farmhouse,” Caleb recounts of the song’s creation. “We would set up our amps on the front porch, so there were these wide, open spaces. From that, we started to play with reverb and more grandiose sounds.”
Caleb’s aching vocals and neurotic lyrics are amongst the most intense the group has ever produced.
5.‘Use Somebody’, Only By The Night (2008)
Only by The Night not only delivered ‘Sex on Fire’, but also presented the equally formidable ‘Use Somebody’. This second single from the album is another sketch of the complicated emotions love can carry with it. ‘Use Somebody’ was written by Caleb while off band duties for medical reasons. Far removed from his Tennessee home, he was feeling lonely. “In that moment,” he later recounted, “I became more honest with myself and allowed myself to be vulnerable in my writing. No longer trying to be a tough guy and admitting I need the people around me — mainly referring to Lily [my wife] — to get through it all. I wrote it in one sitting, very late.”
6.‘Pyro’, Come Around Sundown (2010)
The band’s fifth studio album Come Around Sundown had the unenviable task of following Only By The Night. Its lyrics were inspired by a documentary on the Ruby Ridge Incident, an 11-day siege that occurred in Idaho in 1992. After surrounding a remote rural farmhouse, police engaged radical Christian outlaw Randy Weaver in a lethal gunfight. During the siege, Weaver’s 14-year-old son Sammy and his mother Victoria were shot dead. Federal Marshall William Francis Degan was also killed. Heavy going for an ultimately uplifting song.
7.‘WALLS’, WALLS (2013)
After Caleb walked offstage prematurely at a 2011 Dallas gig, Kings of Leon announced a self-imposed hiatus. In 2012 the group reconvened, and a year later released their sixth album Mechanical Bull. In 2016 they followed it up with WALLS. The LP introduced a softer and more introspective dimension to their sound. “We’re the kind of band that tries to change from album to album,” Caleb told Rolling Stone. “We try to do things that we haven’t done before.”
8.‘Waste A Moment’, WALLS (2016)
WALLS also delivered ‘Waste A Moment’. Which is, by the numbers, the group’s third most popular single. Reflecting the more settled lifestyles of this once–rowdy rock and roll outfit, the song acts as an uplifting coda to the love and confusion of the band’s mid-period material.
9.‘The Bandit’, When You See Yourself (2021)
…which brings us to the modern era. The group’s eighth album When You See Yourself arrived in March 2021. Expansive guitar tones do some heavy lifting as Caleb launches into some truly stratospheric vocals.
10‘Closer’, Only By The Night (2008)
It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than a decade since Only By The Night arrived. Despite personal squabbles and well publicised ups and downs of Kings of Leon’s career, the Followill clan remains committed to their music and each other. “The positives outweigh the negatives so much that I just can’t imagine not being in this band,” Jared informed SPIN earlier this year. “I wouldn’t want to start over with another band and tour. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.” Jarred, it seemed, was not alone in his sentiment. “As long as everyone’s there for the right reason,” Caleb added, “Just wanting to make good music, [Kings of Leon] is something that I can see myself doing forever.”
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Kings of Leon will bring the ‘When You See Yourself’ tour to Australia in March 2022.
