I understand that if you came to the Kings of Leon now, without knowing anything about them, you’d want to know why I was bothering to defend a bloated, 21st century incarnation of Lynyrd Skynyrd. It’s pretty hard to legitimately say that the video for “Radioactive”, in which the Kings cavort with a bunch of free-spirited, young black kids taken straight out of central casting, is anything other than a spectacularly misguided, borderline creepy version of those videos where earnest white artists dance with spear-brandishing Masai warriors on the roaming plains of “Africa”. It’s also pretty easy, and possibly true, to say that their best stuff is behind them. But let’s say that, these days, the Followill boys still have an eye for a sweet slice of catchy Southern rock and, more importantly, let’s also say that their best stuff has been the best (or, at least, good).Once upon a time, the Kings of Leon were the “Southern Strokes”, four down-home boys giving the metropolitan indie-rock revival a much-needed shot of backwoods rawk. Their association with The Strokes meant that more knowing hipsters, who were always suspicious of the rich, Swiss-finishing-school-educated New Yorkers and their industry connections, wrote the Kings of Leon off as poseurs. The story was too good to be true. How could these guys really be brothers? How could they actually be the progeny of a Southern preacher?Convinced that all real Southerners were braindead hicks, capable only of making music to accompany a family game of “fuck the Pig and pass it on”, alt. spokespeople assumed that this music, which appealed to them on a gut level, must have been written by a bunch of cynical hired guns from Williamsburg who understood the power of a good ol’ Biblical fairytale. Pitchfork dedicated whole reviews to questioning the veracity of the Followill’s “schtick”, and grandly declared that the boys “[wouldn’t last a week in The Drive-by-Truckers dirty south](http:// http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4560-aha-shake-heartbreak/)”. For the record, anyone who’s watched Talihina Sky, the documentary about the Kings, knows that they are almost absurdly Southern. They have a family get together every year that involves drinking and throwing horseshoes at a stick. They’re all haunted by fire and brimstone Christianity. They wash themselves in creeks and their friends eulogise about local sock deals (as in, buying good socks for not much money).This was what all the early criticism was about. Like the people who believe Shakespeare was, in reality, Francis Bacon, or the critics who believe that a committee of Oxbridge wordsmiths wrote all of the Arctic Monkeys' songs, Pitchfork and their cohorts were too elitist to imagine that four Southern boys from a religious background could make music that appealed to people in Chicago, New York and London. But it did. They had unexplainable hair and they wrote rolling, dirty classic rock ‘n’ roll songs like this one:
Their first album rocked—everyone knows “Molly’s Chambers”—but it also engaged and moved. “Talihina Sky” is a wistful song about wanting to get out of a beautiful but “pitiful” town, and “Trani” had Bob Dylan rasping “hell of a song”. And if mad Uncle Bob loves it, then who are you to disagree? On their second album, they grew up a bit, got sharper and gave us infectious dancefloor fillers like “The Bucket” and atmospheric, oddly romantic lighter-wavers, like “Milk”.
Of course, the Kings of Leon have got a good deal grander since then. They’re the new Oasis. And that’s where the next wave of criticism comes in. They aren’t hipsters posing as Southerners anymore, they’re bloated corporate rockers posing as troubled Southern hipsters. The wheel of criticism has turned and everyone’s conveniently forgotten what the band used to be criticized for. You can’t have it both ways. And here’s the thing: where else were they going to go? Of that era of breakthrough NME bands that are still around, even Interpol tried to go stadium-sized, and there was a time when indie teens thought they were actual vampires.
Just like The Killers, the Kings of Leon have been lambasted for having some ambition. They make Southern rock, and Southern rock is inherently populist—they’ve never denied or hidden this. Arcade Fire play stadiums, but because they have 12 members and sing about climate change, their ambitions are passed off as benign and visionary. The Kings of Leon play stadiums, but because they are four lusty young men, their ambitions are derided as predictable, boring and offensive. They used to be criticized for not having the tastes of real Southerners and now they’re criticised for actually having those tastes. The indie world imagines that the Kings of Leon have played a cruel trick on them, but all the Kings of Leon ever did was do what they wanted to do.
Not content with attacking their desire to play stadiums, critics also like to dig into the content of the shows. The band is either complaining about being relentlessly shat on by pigeons, or they’re “disrespecting” their fans. People attack them for wanting to play arenas and then go on to lambaste them for a perceived failure to play to their fans—i.e: to play in a stadium rock style. The obsession here is still with authenticity. The haters are still convinced that the Kings of Leon aren’t who they say they are. Caleb’s voice is either not good enough for big venues or it’s “fake”. Have you ever listened to Mick Jagger? Do you think that is his real voice?
The problem for the Kings of Leon is that sites like Pitchfork will always prefer their southerners to be unintelligible, or be the kind of bearded emo-philosopher who only whispers songs about birds migrating. On the other hand, the mainstream, “the fans”, will always be suspicious of rockstars acting out, even if they’ll still pay a bunch of money to go and see these same rockstars. No one’s expecting the Kings of Leon to suddenly reinvent music, but can we stop pretending that they haven’t recorded at least two albums worth of pure Southern gold?
Follow Oscar on Twitter @oscarrickettnow
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