Word: leone
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There are so many implausible things about Nashville's Kings of Leon that the band's implausible lyrics are often overlooked. But let's start there, because more than any other contemporary rock act, Kings of Leon write in the key of crazy. "Sex on Fire," the group's first major hit, has a chorus that goes, "You, your sex is on fire/ Consumed with what's to transpire"--a cheesy come-on followed by the warmth of legalese. The Kings' songbook also includes "Pistol of Fire" ("It's gonna tickle/ You're gonna giggle"), "Soft" ("I'd pop myself...
These Cinemax-quality lyrics are sung in the anguished tone of radio-friendly modern rock over some pretty excellent guitar riffs. It's a recipe that works, at least commercially; a year after the release of their fourth album, Only by the Night, Kings of Leon have chugged past the million-sales mark and boast the No. 1 song on Top 40 radio ("Use Somebody"). They also have the best bandcreation story in memory. These facts are not unrelated...
...Followill brothers--Caleb (vocals, rhythm guitar), Nathan (drums) and Jared (bass)--were raised in a purple Oldsmobile driven by their father Leon, a traveling Pentecostal minister. Apparently they were good and pure Southern boys who abstained from all the fun stuff until 1997, when their parents divorced, Leon left the church, and the mostly homeschooled, God-fearing sons went tumbling into the temptations of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. The group's first release, the EP Holy Roller Novocaine, came out in 2003, shortly after the brothers grabbed cousin Matthew (guitar) from Mississippi and everyone learned how to play...
...preposterously good bio--so good that a European journalist took cotton swabs to an interview in an attempt to verify that the brothers actually share DNA. But as awful as it must have been to live through, it's the family schism that allows Kings of Leon to get away with lyrical murder. Plenty of bands sing about sex, but Kings of Leon use their history to suggest that sex eases the burden of their shattered innocence, and they make music about it to reinforce their fraternal connection. They're aching emotional savants with deep wounds that require constant...
Arias backers like Leon, who as the director of Arias' Peace With Nature campaign is in charge of green projects from national park endowments to getting climate change into school curriculums, admit there are some "inconsistencies" in the government's actions. But he insists Arias is "sincere" about the environment and deserves credit as a "world environmental leader." Leon adds that "making peace with nature," like making peace between ideological enemies a generation ago, is a "a logical sequence to Arias' career." But with little more than a year to go in his second, environmental presidency, a growing number...