"I don't feel like it would be a hard thing to do," Caleb interjects, contradicting his younger brother. "It's like a basketball player who has horrible form but still makes threes, and he becomes a better and better player but they're like, 'Man, I wish he would shoot it like he used to.' It's hard to go back to something once you've moved past it." But we weren't trying to have a certain kind of sound or write super simple parts because it was cool, it's just all that we could do," bassist Jared Followill says of the band's musical evolution. "The style of writing, we could probably tap into really easily. It also happens to be their first American number 1. As frontman Caleb Followill puts it, to "rekindle that love that we had in the beginning." The resulting album is Kings of Leon's most focused and joyous since its breakthrough. While recording its latest album, WALLS, the group - comprised of three brothers and their cousin - hoped to recapture a bit of that early days fire while retaining the winning alchemy of the latter releases.
Two years later, on the back of singles "Sex on Fire" and "Use Somebody," Kings of Leon were one of the biggest rock bands in the world. In the wake of a 2006 tour with U2, a new batch of songs emerged, offering a more spacious sound with a decidedly pop sheen.
If the first two releases are chock-full of piss and vinegar - a homespun hybrid of the Strokes and the soulful classic rock of their southern brethren, complete with requisite tight pants, big beards and moral depravity - the five that followed share an altogether less acidic tone. There's a not-so-subtle divide in the Kings of Leon's musical output, which stretches 15 years and seven albums.