Kings of Leon: We're Too Popular

Frontman Caleb Followill annoyed by group's success
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 4, 2009 10:41 AM CST

You’d think Kings of Leon would be thrilled by the group's recent success, capped off by four Grammy nods for “Use Somebody,” but it's actually kind of annoying. “We definitely got bigger than we wanted to be,” frontman Caleb Followill tells Spin. “You feel like you’ve done something wrong. That woman in mom jeans who’d never let me date her daughter? She likes my music. That’s f---ing not cool.”

It’s gotten so bad that the band members are in “damage control” mode, refusing to promote the album. Before Only by the Night, the group’s first three albums had sold only about 200,000 copies each in the US, but Followill said he got his first inkling of trouble after Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder listened to the latest disc. “He said, ‘You’re about to ride a big wave.’ I don’t even think he liked the record. But he knew immediately we were about to go through something big.” (More Kings of Leon stories.)

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