Kings of Leon are a curiosity: they're a hugely successful band who churn out albums that are experimental, diverse in the range they cover across them, and generally poorly reviewed even by the people who regularly listen to them, much less the critical community who generally eviscerates them, but still, when I saw them live, there were 7,000 women sing-shouting every word into the 5,000 bored looking boyfriends who made the mistake of accompanying their lady and (if still more unfortunate) their lady's friends to this little southern band's big rock show.

So what is it then? Is it because they're hot? I don't know.

Maybe if I was there at the beginning, when they were getting called "the Southern Strokes", a band that I am also somewhat familiar with (but don't like) that women seem to love that I just don't understand, then I would understand better.

When I listen to Kings of Leon I hear the same thing everyone else does: a valiant attempt at writing some fun rock tunes in the key of... well... can we cross U2 with Pixies with Nirvana with all sorts of other shit that I don't understand? On this song particularly you've got this kind of... well, what I just said, it doesn't need to be said.

But what is it? Why do women like Kings of Leon?

I told a girl friend of mine that I was going to see them. "Oh yeah?" she said, "I hear they suck ass live." Later, I invited this girl and some of her friends to a Local H concert and they ended up walking out after two songs. She listens to a lot of Neil Young and Led Zeppelin so I guess I could understand if she didn't like the grunge-cum-hard rock of Local H and I wasn't too offended.

A little while ago she called me excitedly to tell me, "I am going to go see Kings of Leon!!!! How cool is that!"

See!

What is that!

Life is unfair.

This is a band full of charmers, for sure, how else could they possibly amass such massive success based on the strength of a bunch of poorly constructed albums and songs?

All I know is that I saw them live and they were pretty hot. Then I went home and listened to a bunch of their music, and found it all really disappointing, but when people talk about them I have to say, "I was entertained and people seem to like them a lot," and maybe that's just it... people like them, so people like them.

Kings of Leon were relevant for a second some time in the past and they managed to exploit that second to the fullest extent they could and turned themselves into legends who play in arenas, they set a precedent and are totally ruling by it every day.

Good for them. I like this song. The rest mostly suck. Go see them live.