Kings of Leon

Kings of Leon came out of Tennessee in 1999, three Followill brothers, Caleb, Nathan and Jared, plus their cousin Matthew, and for their first few years they sounded like a sweaty roadhouse band that had fallen hard for garage rock. The Holy Roller Novocaine EP in 2003, led by "Molly's Chambers", mixed Southern rock grit, garage rattle and a whiff of the blues, all swagger.

Britain got it first. Aha Shake Heartbreak in 2004, with "The Bucket" and "Four Kicks", was wiry and wild, and the band racked up nine top 40 singles in the UK. By 2008 they had 2 BRIT Awards, and all three of their albums at that point had gone top five on the UK chart, with Because of the Times, which carried "On Call" and "Fans", going all the way to number one. That record was darker and moodier, with the guitars stretched out and the attitude simmering rather than boiling over.

Then came Only by the Night in September 2008, and America finally surrendered. The sound got bigger and glossier, built for arenas, and "Sex on Fire", "Use Somebody" and "Notion" all reached number one on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. "Use Somebody" is the one with the soaring, stadium-sized ache, and it won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 2010. It became their first platinum record in the US, and in Australia it outsold every other album of 2008 on its way to nine times platinum.

They kept going: Come Around Sundown on October 18, 2010, with "Radioactive", Mechanical Bull in 2013, with "Super Soaker", Walls in 2016, with "Waste a Moment", When You See Yourself in 2021 and Can We Please Have Fun on May 10, 2024. Along the way they have won 4 Grammys from 12 nominations. On the countdowns, "Sex on Fire" and "Use Somebody" remain the ones rock radio can't quit.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.