Kings of Leon Deny They're 'Nickelback for People Who Don't Like Nickelback'

Posted on Dec 17th 2010 2:35PM by Jonathan Dekel
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Jeff Kravitz, FilmMagic.com

It's hard to be king in the Internet age. In a time when false information is granted equal credence as fact and anyone with an elementary understanding of writing can post an opinion, it's nearly impossible to get to the top of any field without a certain level of criticism. This theory is further amplified in the world of music when it comes to bands and journalists, who serve as their potential king-makers.

In the case of Kings of Leon -- a band that spent years toiling in near obscurity before striking it massive with their fourth album, 2008's 'Only by the Night' -- the press and early adopters quickly turned on the band once they achieved worldwide success, claiming their new material was a watered-down version of the gritty, southern rock that populated their early albums. Perhaps the most visible negative comparison came from Spin Magazine, which described the group as "Nickelback for people who don't like Nickelback."

Though Spin's intentions may have been a simplified populist analogy, for the band's guitarist Matthew Followill, those kinds of criticisms confuse rather than sting.

"It just makes me raise my eyebrows, like 'Really?'" he tells Spinner. "I don't see it at all. I don't know what they're talking about."

Instead of considering the implications of the diss, Followill chooses a rather pragmatic view.

"Once you get big, and have a record like we did and the success we did, you just get people that don't like you anymore or don't like you period," he says.

Or to put it with the pomp that the circumstance calls for, Followill notes that "for every person that compares us to Nickelback or calls us annoying, there's many more people that call us the next big stadium band."

Watch Kings of Leon's Video for 'Radioactive'