In 20 Songs: Kings of Leon

This article pays tribute to the music of Kings of Leon through a review of 20 of their best songs. To listen to the playlist please simply follow this link to Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/73hjmW1LIETN9krl8tnbdf?si=uloOTPxGRZeo67-T1zKVCg


Kings of Leon require little introduction. The band, comprised of the three Followill brothers (Caleb, Nathan and Jared) and cousin Matthew, were founded in Tennessee and first found fame in the early noughties. Their blend of guitar rock with southern influences quickly saw them become the American South’s counterpart to the urban garage rock of New York darlings the Strokes.


Debut album ‘Youth and Young Manhood’, released in 2003, was a highly acclaimed collection of raw and ragged guitar rock. Opener ‘Red Morning Light’ is the perfect manifesto for the record with it’s spikey opening riff building to a 3-minute riot. ‘Joe’s Head’, carried by a jangling guitar riff, tells the grizzly tale of the protagonist calling his best friend just after killing his girlfriend and her lover. ‘Trani’ may begin as a slower number, but it steadily builds up to one of the most raucous tracks on the album with the guitar solo at it’s conclusion as wild as anything the Rolling Stones ever produced and Caleb’s cracked vocal sounding almost feral by the song’s end. The record’s best track, and the song that broke them to the ears of many fans, ‘Molly’s Chambers’ is a concise rock and roll classic that saw the band combine all of their elements to perfection.


The band followed the success of their debut with the more ambitious and confident ‘Aha Shake Heartbreak’ in 2005. Led by lead single ‘King of the Rodeo’, a confident strut powered by a thundering guitar riff and handclaps and arguably their finest song, the record was again met with great acclaim. The album found the group more willing to slow things down and mid-album track ‘Milk’, one of the most beautiful songs they’ve ever written, is a slow building tribute to a love interest with Caleb softly growling “She saw my combover, her hourglass body, she had problems with drinking milk and being school tardy, she’ll loan you her toothbrush, she’ll bartend your party”. It is hard to imagine a song about erectile disfunction ever sounding cool but ‘Soft’ is one of the album’s highlights as it tells the tale of a frustrated lover’s failings over an urgent chorus.


2007 saw the group return with their third album ‘Because of the Times’. A darker record, it saw the group polish off some of their jagged edges and was comprised of intense, brooding and, at times, melancholic songs. Lead single ‘On Call’ thunders along with a menacing bassline before finding it’s melody with the chorus and it’s B-Side ‘My Third House’ (not available on Spotify but it can be heard here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1sRQE2Z088&app=desktop) is a song so urgent and passionate that it should never have been resigned to a B-Side. ‘My Party’ saw the band combine their penchant for a spiky guitar riff with a darker undercurrent of sound but still sounding like their having fun doing it. ‘Fans’, one of the album’s slower numbers and a fan favourite, is a gentle acoustic ballad that saw Caleb deliver his most passionate vocal since ‘Trani’. 


By this time the band had built a huge following on both sides of the Atlantic and were darlings of the independent music scene. It’s subject to debate whether the 2009 record ‘Only by the Night’ is the sound of a band desperate to make the conversion to the big time success of commercial acclaim or simply the sound of a band worn out and struggling to come up with original ideas. Either way, it was the record that brought them to the masses with ‘Sex on Fire’ becoming a huge single and the scourge of wedding discos for all time and saw the ragged rock and roll spirit that many loved polished away to something more radio friendly and accessible. Some readers may be dismayed to find ‘Sex on Fire’ and similarly massive single ‘Use Somebody’ not included on this playlist but, included instead is ‘Crawl’, a looming track powered by a dirty riff and one of this album’s only redeeming features. Also included is ‘Revelry’, a delicately stripped back composition that would have sat comfortably on ‘Because of the Times’.


Great success brings great pressure and this has been a constant weight around the necks of Kings of Leon. Subsequent releases may have sold well but many of the band’s fans were dismayed at their seeming inability to recapture what made them special in the first place. 2011’s ‘Come Around Sundown’ was a turgid blob of an album that failed to ever gain traction and, even when the band seemed to have come up with something special (like the doo wop vocals on ‘Mary’ or the exciting opening riff to ‘No Money’) the tendency for over production and a sense of lethargy washed away any initial promise. The sole redeeming moments on this collection are the beautiful stripped back ballad ‘Back Down South’ featuring a gorgeous slide guitar riff and the funky ‘Mi Amigo’ which shows more strut and bluster than the rest of the collection put together.


At this point many of the band’s fans may have lost faith that the group could ever produce anything as exciting as their earlier records but 2013’s ‘Mechanical Bull’ found the group re-invigorated and sounding more confident than they had done in years. Gone is the over-production on ‘Don’t Matter’, a guitar driven maelstrom so fierce you wouldn’t introduce it to your gran and ‘Temple’ was one of the band’s best song for years perfectly combining their knack for a catchy chorus with rough round the edges vocals and guitar. Although not the most consistent of records, the album found the band sounding exciting again.


Their most recent record, 2016’s ‘WALLS’ was a more polished and, as a result less exciting, collection but certainly an album worth giving your attention to. Skip the Springsteen styled lead single ‘Waste a Moment’ and instead go straight to ‘Around the World’ - a feel good song that combines a guitar driven melody with something a little funkier. ‘Muchacho’ is a slower number with a Mexican inspired instrumental backing as the title suggests and ‘Eyes on You’, the final song in this playlist, is a guitar driven stomp that showed that Kings of Leon can still write anthemic guitar rock when they put their mind to it.


Whether you think they are a band that still have great promise or a group that enjoyed their finest moments many years ago, after you’ve listened to this playlist you surely can’t disagree that, when they are at their finest, Kings of Leon are one of the best guitar bands of our time.