Album · Kings of Leon
Only by the Night by Kings of Leon
Only by the Night is an album by Kings of Leon, released in 2008. 5 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 188 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Sex On Fire”, on 82 lists and voted number one twice.
Only by the Night, Kings of Leon's fourth album, arrived on RCA in September 2008, and the writing for it had started only days after Because of the Times reached the shops. Jacquire King and Angelo Petraglia produced it at Blackbird Studio in Nashville in April 2008, and the band came out of those sessions with songs big enough to fill the biggest rooms going.
The guitars ring wide and glossy, the drums thud like a heartbeat pumped through a stadium PA, and the vocals are all ache and gravel. "Sex on Fire" is the overheated one, a single that went to number one in the UK, Ireland, Australia and on America's Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. "Use Somebody" is the yearning one, and it gave them their first American top-10 hit. "Closer", "Crawl" and "Notion" fill in the darker corners.
It was a monster abroad: top 10 in more than 10 countries, the biggest-selling album of 2008 in Australia, where it went nine times platinum, and the third best seller of the year in the UK, with two Brit Awards to show for it. Back home it earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album in 2009.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from Only by the Night on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sex On Fire | 82 | #1 | 2 | 2008–2026 | |
| 2 | Use Somebody | 64 | #1 | 14 | 2008–2026 | |
| 3 | Notion | 28 | #7 | – | 2009 | |
| 4 | Crawl | 9 | #19 | – | 2008–2010 | |
| 5 | Closer | 5 | #24 | – | 2008–2025 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.