“Radioactive,” the newest effort from the reigning Top 40 champs Kings of Leon, isn’t a radical departure from their tried-and-true musical style, but it does reflect the aspirations of a band clearly energized by their status. You can tell they’re eager to defy their legions of critics and prove they are not, in fact, Nickelback 2.0 (for real, though, they aren’t).
The sheer ambitiousness of this single is striking. “Radioactive” is rich and varied in sound and style — it combines the simple, Southern-rock hooks of vintage KoL with big, arena-rock synth power and a Gospel choir soundalike on the choruses. There’s no doubt that this band tried to craft something powerful — this is a remarkably big song. You can hear it from the echoey backing vocals to the sweeping guitar riffs near the end.
Whether or not the song is good is, to me, less interesting than the portrait that it paints of the band that made it. Don’t get us wrong; “Radioactive” is a solid track — it’s satisfying and it succeeds at being both catchy and artful at points. At the end of the day, though, this single certainly won’t turn skeptics into KoL fans. Really, what’s most interesting to us is that it captures a band in transition. The simpler, spontaneous sound of the Kings of old still lingers in notes of “Radioactive,” and you get this idea that they’re yearning for something higher than Top 40 pop dominance. But we’re not sure, quite yet, what that is.
3.5 Stars
