Twelve months ago, if you’d mentioned the Kings of Leon within the confides of One Golden Square you’d have heard mutterings of “why don’t we ever play them?” or “we should be hammering Molly’s Chambers and The Bucket.”
Perhaps the murmurings of discontent held some validity but then hindsight is a wonderful thing. However, from a programming perspective, we were looking at a niche, specialist band who, three albums down the line, were showing no signs of crossing over into the mainstream. Very much an Absolute Xtreme band at this point, we struggled to find more than two singles on the band’s third album “Because Of the Times”. In terms of profile, the band had a hardcore indie following in the UK with minimal impact on the US market – and with the positioning of the last radio station, the feeling was that a lot of work needed to be done before there was a shot at getting on the playlist.
As we will all recall, in the early stages of Absolute Radio and the infancy of this blog, the hot topic of debate was the music policy that the new station would adopt. Everyone had an opinion, the knives were out and the musos within One Golden Square began salivating at the prospect of a much wider playlist. The idea that Absolute Radio was looking to claim ownership on previously overlooked guitar bands to create its own identity meant that perhaps the Kings of Leon, still relatively unknown to the mainstream audience, could in the future appear on our playlist.
Fast forward to June 2009 and the Kings of Leon are now a core Absolute Radio band. They have sold an astonishing 2 million copies of “Only By The Night” and have found themselves as one of the most popular bands in the UK. A regular lone champion of guitar rock in an otherwise pop swamped itunes chart, Sex on Fire, Notion, Revelry, and Use Somebody have done and continue to do the business for all concerned in a hugely depressed market. And each week in the music strategy meeting, we pour over statistics and research that you the listener have provided for us. The incredible results (on the presentation below) demonstrate how the Kings of Leon have crossed over.
A combination of great songs and a passionate response from you the listener has meant that the Kings of Leon are now firmly established as the Absolute Radio band whose time is now- we know because you’ve told us.
David
