My freak accident was kind of a miracle
“WE’RE able to save the foot.”
That is what Kings Of Leon frontman Caleb Followill heard a doctor tell his wife after a freak accident at home.
“My kids wanted to play tag because they didn’t want to go to bed,” he recalls.
“I went to hurdle the couch, and when I did, my back foot caught it. So, I threw my legs underneath me to try to stick the landing, and it was just heels first.
“I was losing blood and there was a moment where they thought they might have to take my foot.
“They [the medics] said they’d only ever seen an injury like this when a man had fallen off a five-storey building.”
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In a video call with Caleb and his cousin, guitarist Matthew Followill, from their Nashville homes, the singer reveals: “The heel of my foot was in the middle of my foot, so it was like there was a massive lump in the middle.”
With the band then just weeks away from their 2025 UK and European tour, Matt initially thought Caleb was exaggerating the extent of his injury.
“He sent this text and I thought it was a joke,” says Matt.
“He was, like, ‘Guys, I hurt my foot really bad. We might not be able to go on tour’. And I was, like, ‘Yeah, right. How could you hurt your foot so badly?’ But the X-rays are pretty gnarly.”
What began as a nightmare would, however, become the inspiration for the band’s most personal, stripped-back album yet.
O My Beloved is the Nashville group’s tenth studio album and it sees them reflecting on family, love and loss.
Caleb admits: “I was going through a lot and had to mentally be strong.
“I couldn’t sleep at night. I would have panic attack after panic attack. I was so depressed, so helpless . . .
“When you’re the man of the house and everyone’s taking care of you, it’s a bad feeling.”
But as he recovered at home with his wife, model Lily Aldridge, and their kids Dixie, 14, and seven-year-old Winston, Caleb picked up his guitar and found himself writing songs unlike anything the band had released before.
“I feel like my relationship with my children took a whole new step,” he says.
“The first song that came was My Whole World. As soon as the rhythm started, I began singing, and the words just very naturally came out.
“It was very therapeutic. And the songs that followed had a similar feel.” After that, the band scrapped the four or five guitar-driven songs they had been working on to embrace a quieter, more acoustic sound.
“I remember a couple of times during the demo process, I pulled my truck over to the side of the road and had tears in my eyes,” Caleb recalls. “I was, like, ‘Man, it feels so different’.
“It was kind of a miracle, in a way. It was something that needed to happen to stop the cycle of tour, then make an album and repeat.”
Matt adds: “This album is a way to turn something terrible into something positive.
“Now we’ve made this album, when you think about that time at home, it has a different meaning. And with it being our tenth album, we wanted to do something different.”
The enforced break also gave Caleb time to reflect on more than 25 years of Kings Of Leon.
“It was the first time since we started that I’ve ever really looked at what we’ve accomplished,” he admits.
“Instead of looking at the workload ahead, it was kind of looking back and going, ‘Whoa, 25 years, we’ve done more than we ever dreamed we would do’.
“It was a really beautiful time of reflection.”
For years, Matt, Caleb and his brothers — drummer Nathan and bassist Jared — wanted to be recognised for their music rather than family connections.
“For so long, we were tired of talking about being family,” Matt says. “We were, like, ‘No, we’re a band, just see us as a band’. But with this music, it’s all about family, and I guess it was time to quit avoiding talking about it.”
Caleb and his brothers spent much of their childhood travelling through Tennessee, Oklahoma and the South with their father, a Pentecostal preacher, often sleeping in cars or staying with relatives.
“It was the little moments that inspired the songs,” says Caleb. “Like small conversations with my uncle Larry or moments at our family reunions.
“We didn’t have, excuse my language, a pot to piss in, but we had love and each other and we created beautiful memories.
“We grew up poor, and that was always our thing. You know, ‘One day our ship’s going to come in’.
“One day, my older brother Nathan said, ‘I think our ship is the Titanic’, because it felt like our ship was never coming in.”
The family saying inspired a lyric in My Whole World when the siblings were excited about a forthcoming family cruise.
Caleb explains: “A picture of the ship said ‘29 days ’til . . . ’ so I wrote ‘29 days ’til our ship comes in. We’ll be together again’.” Matt adds: “I also love that that’s something your mum used to say.”
And memories of Caleb’s mum Betty Ann, who died in 2021, are woven into the new album.
“When I had messed up and everyone was mad at me, I could always call her,” Caleb explains.
“When you lose that person, it forces you to kind of really take ownership of who you are. For the first time, it’s ‘Oh, man, I’m the grown-up’.
“I didn’t really deal with the grief or loss, and this was the first time I was able to do it in a way that didn’t feel like I was whining about it,” Caleb admits.
“Sometimes I think, ‘Oh, man, she would love this’, or, ‘She would be proud of this’, and then I’m like, ‘No, she does love this and she is proud of it’.”
The freedom of childhood also runs through KOYSAR (Kick Off Your Shoes And Run) — a song Caleb wrote for his daughter about growing up in the age of social media.
Pretty Thing is a poignant story inspired by the old country songs Caleb grew up listening to.
He says: “It’s not autobiographical as we didn’t have that traditional high-school experience. It was the forbidden fruit.
“And I always admired songs about first love in high school — that glamorous football player with the cheerleader.
“As I got deeper into writing it, it felt like more than a break-up, like, ‘Maybe this man died, and so he’s watching her move on with her life. Every time I play that song for my wife, she cries.”
Other standouts include The Hand and Rose — which Matt cites as his favourites — while Caleb singles out Get You Down for its emotional depth.
O My Beloved is a stunning album, with its delicate, quieter sound allowing the band’s musicianship to shine.
Matt says: “We wanted everything to have a purpose, and not to have extra stuff muddying up the mixes. We tried to have clear sounds and a clear vision.”
“Us producing the album ourselves was a real opportunity for us to really home in on sounds,” Caleb adds. “We wanted to let the songs shine.”
As we chat about his lyrics, I’m surprised to hear Caleb admit he still struggles with insecurity over his songwriting.
He says: “I’m self-conscious about lyrics. For the most part, I’m so scared for anyone to hear anything.
“I never used to enjoy playing shows. But over the last five years, I love walking out on stage and am no longer scared.”
Matt continues: “Being in Kings Of Leon is hands-down better than it’s ever been for us, for touring and just being together.
“For some of the time, it wasn’t fun but now we look forward to getting together.”
The band return to the UK next month for a one-off show at the new British Airways ARC before headlining next summer’s Isle of Wight and Lytham festivals and playing a string of shows across the country.
Caleb admits they are still working out how to fit the new songs into their live performances.
“It’d be hard to put those songs in between Spiral Staircase and Sex On Fire,” he says. “You have to let them breathe and have their own little moment.”
And after a recent performance in Texas, he is keen to include strings in future shows.
“We had a big, beautiful string section with us, and it was pretty magical and maybe we want to grow that,” he says.
Britain has always held a special place in the band’s hearts, with fans here embracing them long before they found success back home in America.
“They were there first, and they have never left,” says Caleb. “Loyalty matters to us.”
Matt adds: “My wife is English, and she says that if you make a fan in Britain, you pretty much make a fan for life.”
London also brings back memories of the band’s wild early days. “When we’d be in London, we’d go crazy,” says Caleb. “We’d do interviews and get drunk before. Like, ‘No one’s going to see this. Who cares?!’”
A lot of the more memorable moments involved fights, too. “One time, me and Nathan ended up in a Koi pond,” Caleb laughs. I had hit him over the head with a frying pan. It’s a true story.”
Both he and Matt are relieved social media wasn’t around then to capture their antics.
“We probably just would never have gone to those clubs because we’d be on Instagram or TikTok the next day,” laughs Matt.
“It was, like, ‘Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’,” adds Caleb. “We were just small-town guys let loose. And, thank God, we survived.
“There were a lot of crazy memories — a lot of moments that just didn’t feel real at the time.
“I’ll never forget when we walked on stage at Glastonbury [in 2008], when we got to headline it.
“Years ago, a man grabbed me by the hand, and said, ‘You will be in front of multitudes’. It scared me because I didn’t know what he meant by that.
“When we walked out on stage at Glastonbury, it was the first time it hit me that that was what he was talking about.”
Almost two decades after that unforgettable show, Caleb and Matt are enjoying being in Kings Of Leon more than ever.
“It really feels like we made our first album again,” Caleb says. “Producing it ourselves to the way that we wrote the songs, the instrumentation . . . it really felt like we were doing something for the first time.
“Most bands don’t ever get to make a first album. They certainly don’t get to make it twice.
“It feels like the beginning of something. I don’t know what that is, but I’m enjoying it.”
- O My Beloved is out next Friday.
KINGS OF LEON
O My Beloved