Album review: Breaking down the lyrics of Kings of Leon’s “When You See Yourself”

Angeles Mendes, Reporter

Kings of Leon is a 1999 band most known for making music enlisted in the alternative genre. They released their lasted album titled “When You See Yourself” on March 5.

Their album consists of eleven songs which the lead singer of the band Caleb Followill describes them as the point in time or age when everything feels as though it is going by so slow you want to jump out of reality.

Followill also explained to an iTunes outlet, “A lot of the lyrics are just coming to terms with what’s to come and what has already happened.”

The alternative album consists of three singles: “The Bandit”, “Stormy Weather”, and “When You See Yourself, Are You Far Away”.

The single “When You See Yourself, Are You Far Away” opens with lyrics

“This space in time, this bated breath / I’ve seen your kind at your very best”

signifying a moment of looking ahead in time for what is to come which is nothing other than the very best for oneself.

Caleb also explained in a iTunes description for another one of their singles “The Bandit” that it is solely inspired by the chase of a bounty hunter chasing after a bandit he says the chase is more thrilling than the catch.

As lyrics state “And they’re walking around / with their heads in the cloud / screaming must catch the bandit” 100,000 people was a song inspired by Caleb’s father in law who struggled with alzeihmer’s. Caleb said he felt in the moment that he could write a song on how he was still in love with this woman. These inspired lyrics read “Hands of a stranger touching you / wide awake incased in a dream /everything is not as it seems / all your time is heaven sent”

Also in theme to a point in time in which everything feels as though it cannot be speed up or what Caleb describes as

“wanting to jump out of reality”

in the song “Golden Restless Age.” It covers uplifting lyrics

“They fall you rise / its here, your time / the golden restless age and time won’t turn the page / your only passing through a form of you.”

The lyrics refers to a point of realization that everything is purely a chapter of one’s life that is meant to be lived through.

The album “When You See Yourself” was originally written in early 2020 however its release was delayed until March 2021.

Band member, Caleb Followill describes the album as “life being the vein” to it, the 1999 band wrote the album in dedication to youth.