2 months ago 20th Sep 08:15
Five years after releasing their debut album 'Youth And Young Manhood', Kings of Leon finally scored a number one single in Britain with the first release - entitled 'Sex On Fire' - from their new album, 'Only By The Night', last weekend (14.09.08). The band - consisting for brothers Caleb, Jared and Nathan Followill and their cousin Matthew Followill - have long been a staple of the indie music scene but, although they have scored a number one album, the all-important chart-topping hit single has always eluded them.
In fact, the group have always been treated as the slightly less important cousins of the true rock band colossuses; while radio stations and music magazines would count down the months, weeks and days before a new release from The Killers, Coldplay or Oasis, until now new tracks from the Kings of Leon garnered little excitement.
This dismissal of the long-haired boys from Tennessee was even apparent during this year's festival season - while Jay-Z received reams of column inches dedicated to dissecting his highly-anticipated performance at the Glastonbury Music Festival, and months of rumours claiming he was not even going to appear beforehand, Kings of Leon's headline set on the opening night of the festival went virtually unreported.
At the festival, they played a blistering set peppered with both old and new songs, before a tipsy Caleb waved a bottle of whisky at the crowd and announced: "We've got a few more songs for you, my voice is a little shot. I guess I got a little too well prepared, but I'm drunk and having fun. The people at the BBC asked us not to play any new songs, but we're going to have to ruffle some feathers tonight because it's Glastonbury."
Their performance proved they are no strangers to rock-star antics, so why are Kings of Leon only just managing to break into public consciousness? And what is it about 'Sex On Fire' that has caught the nation's imagination?
It's a question that frontman Caleb has also pondered, particularly as he originally thought the song was so "terrible" he almost didn't bother finishing it.
"I just had this melody and I didn't know what to say," he remembers. "Then one day I just sang 'This sex is on fire' and I laughed. I thought it was terrible, but the rest of the band were like, 'It's good, it's got a hook'. I was like, 'F**k off!' but I ended up writing it. I was like, 'Come on man, I gotta be singing about someone's fiery sex for a year and half?' It's a bold title, y'know, we're getting old and we're trying to make people think we have still have the sex drive that we did.
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