Kings Of Leon hit early in the roughly two-decade long stretch in which I had both the disposable cash and disposable time to actually keep up with what we so sloppily call "the music scene". At this point, I probably remember the conversation around them better than I do most of Youth And Young Manhood's album tracks. NME loved them because they weren't another "The" band. The internet purists scorned them because their debut was co-written by the dude who gave The Mavericks their biggest hit. It's hard in retrospect who to pity more.
I guess NME were at least circling an approximation of a photocopy of a point. Kings of Leon saw the arch remove of Strokes-pushed New Wave, and figured "Fuck that". Kind of like how Oasis kicked back against the last alleged crisis point in rock music nine years earlier, only with, you know, actual tunes.
Key to this was Caleb Followhill's agonised bark, the voice that launched a thousand metaphors. A weasel drowning in a mustard vat. Fingernails hate-fucking on a chalkboard. A live recording of the failed exorcism of a haunted bouncy castle. Whatever. In an era where coolness was defined by how little of a fuck you could give, the Followhills sounded like they really, really wanted to be doing this. They just didn't care if you wanted them to be doing this. "We're here, he's unclear, get used to it".
It would be easy to conflate the two approaches as both refusing to give a shit about whether the audience exists at all. That would be a mistake, though. The Strokes really cared that you thought that they didn't care what you thought. Kings Of Leon didn't give a shit. The Stokes ended their debut with a song called "Take It Or Leave It". Kings Of Leon start "California Waiting" with a fucking cowbell.
In fact, "California Waiting" is the lynchpin of that first album - not quite the strongest song (though only "Molly's Chambers" is better), but the one that most fully maps out their position of being desperate to play, and thoroughly uninterested in being heard. It's essentially a standard "fame is hard" song, except that it's arrived before the fame. You can read that as a statement of cocky arroagance, but you can also read it as all the ways in which everything about being a band sucks apart from the bit when you're playing. The weightlessness of touring. All the people you're interacting with who ultimately just stand between you and your instruments. Fidgeting behind stage while the crew get everything arranged just so. You only wanted to howl into a mic while your cousin laid down some tasty licks. "While you're trying to save me", Caleb droolhowls, "Why can't I get back my lonely life"? Just fuck off, everyone. You're trying to fix the wrong things.
It's not exactly original, clearly. It's not even persuasive - if you wanted to just keep playing in your garage, that option was entirely open to you. Nor can I ignore that this would become a recurring problem for KoL once they were fully established in the bigtime - the "oh woe I have to do promos" churlishness of "The Bucket"*, the skeezy-as-fuck "At least we keep getting laid" of "Fans". Right here, though, the approach works, because it's fast, it's fun, and it at least wants to convey something. One more idea you can go with or not, because the band is just here to have fun.
Fun rock music, huh? What a concept.
*Which also absoutely rips off Led Zepplin's "Going To California", which suggests that the Followhill's at least knew that by that point they were repeating themselves and literally everyone else.
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