Kings of Leon’s Caleb Followill Reveals How a Series of Family Tragedies Led to an Album Unlike Anything They’ve Ever Made (Exclusive)

Kings of Leon is trying something new. The band, which is fronted by Caleb Followill, is gearing up to release their latest album, O My Beloved. The LP is unlike anything they’ve ever done before.

During an appearance on American Songwriter’s Off the Record podcast, Followill told host Lisa Konick how the LP, which is due out Nov. 6, came amid a period of emotional turmoil.

The band, which is made up of Followill’s brothers and cousin, had been struggling with their mother’s death. However, they “bottled up that grief” to make their 2024 album, Can We Please Have Fun. Followill said that decision was simply because he “didn’t think the world needed to hear our sadness.”

However, after the resulting tour, Followill injured his foot and was forced to address that grief like never before.

“I was sitting there and it went from writing out of gratitude to just opening up and writing about my mom and just feelings and emotions and fears and all these things,” he said. “It became much more therapeutic than it ever has been.”

“We got hit with a rough patch, man. We were losing family members right and left. Grandma, mom, my favorite uncle, my aunt. It was all these things,” Followill added. “It almost felt like it needed to happen the way that it did; it needed to be not just one, but 10 things hit you to finally break you and make you go, ‘All right, I’ve got to address this.’”

Kings of Leon’s Caleb Followill Discusses What Prompted the Band’s New Direction

At that time, Followill said he “was feeling sorry for myself and I felt guilty everyone was upset.” He initially started writing songs in King of Leon’s signature rock style, but something soon changed.

“I finally got the guitar and I started playing and it didn’t sound like anything that I would normally play. I started to sing and the words just came out. It felt like it had been in there for a long time, but I was so busy trying to be Kings of Leon that I had abandoned the songwriter, if you will,” he said. “And as soon as that happened, I felt something different. I was like, ‘This is more meaningful than what we’ve been working on.’”

The rest of the band quickly got on board with the concept.

“Everyone was just like, ‘Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that’s what we should do,’” Followill said. “So instead of trying to fit my whole world in between two rock songs, I just kept writing.”

Kings of Leon’s Caleb Followill on the “Therapeutic” Experience of Making Their New Album

Songs continued pouring out, and, eventually, the album was born.

“It became therapeutic, looking back with gratitude of how we got here, and how it’s lasted this long, and how we’ve built these families. I went from… feeling like it’s the end of a career [to where it] felt like, no, this is a new point in the career,” Followill said. “It felt like it was our first album because we were independent. We don’t have a label, we didn’t have all these things. We didn’t have anyone we were trying to please. And we just went in there and it just got back to what we initially wanted.”

Amid the process, Followill said he gave himself the grace to “be honest, be vulnerable, be open, not think about what the expectations are and just really try to write something that does have a meaning and does speak to me.”

“I feel like it’s an album about life and about living life and about the highs and lows, the peaks and the valleys,” he said. “… I tried to make an album that is just about life, and little moments, and the things that shape us and make us the people that we are.”