Sex Sells, Even When On Fire
I'd like to make this perfectly clear: I did not name this column Rock Throb. I'll pass the inevitable Walkley Award to our dutiful music editor for that one
[Rock Bob? Room of Doom? Tea and jam with Andrew? I'm flexible. Ed] . Since it's an internet-only feature, hopefully it falls under the rubric of arch-cynicism that anything on the web written by anyone over twenty five inevitably should. That said, rock is about sex and the Kings Of Leon know it as well as anyone.
After debuting at a lowly twenty-five on the Australian Charts, 'Sex On Fire', the first single from their latest album Only By The Night, finally hit number one and is surely a good reason that said album sold triple platinum in this country. It's also the reason they sold out stadium shows around the country in seconds.
The most obvious signifier of any song's popularity is when I hear it blaring out of a car while observing the mental patients from my balcony. The second most obvious is when the girl in the first floor flat says about a song "You gotta admit, it's pretty sexy" with a ribald spark in her eye while her live-in boyfriend is standing right behind her.
We Australians must be a little slow. Kings Of Leon have always written songs about sex. Their first EP Holy Roller Novocainefeatured a song called 'Wasted Time' which itself features the lyric "Shakin' your apple right in my face / only when you know that I'm beggin' for a bite". Since the Followill brothers grew up in Tennessee, travelling through the Deep South with their Pentecostal preacher father, rather than in Rwanda scraping an existence during a Civil War, we can be quite sure that the line is not about starvation.
Now these boys (brothers Caleb, Nathan and Jared and their cousin Matthew) might have been unaware that they looked like archetypal hipsters – scruffy, skinny and pale – and the overdose of hype and modicum of success that followed that EP and 2003's innocently salacious Youth And Young Manhood saw indie chicks attach themselves like leeches.
This works. Their cover of second album Aha Shake Heartbreak featured a notably erotic orchid and the overheated odes to taper-jeaned girls. Sure, a little esoteric but it outcharted their last, hitting 25. Last year's Because Of The Times was the album that saw then disillusioned by the bright city lights and, presumably, the non-stop groupie action. The first song was called 'Knocked Up', a situation that usually results from sexxxing. When Caleb howls on 'Charmer' it's not an ursine growl or pink panther purr but the sound of a toddler being whipped. I like my seduction tunes a little dark – The Strokes, The Stooges, Slayer – so that works too. The album snuck up to number four on release.
But Kings Of Leon had to write a song with "sex" in the title to hit number one. Compared to their brisk, knee-slapping beginnings, it's a pretty underwhelming tune. The chorus line is so creepy that British stand-up Matthew McIntyre poked fun at it as a 000 call during his Live At The Apollo set broadcast a couple of days ago. Just goes to show how far we have come since Chuck Berry's 'My Ding-A-Ling'.
Caleb even admitted he dreads playing the song because the chorus is "ridiculous" and that he doesn't want to be singing about "someone's fiery sex for a year and half". But he'll stop complaining when he picks up the cheques from stadia stacked with simpletons who need burning crotch references to remind them what that thing in their pants is for.