Here comes another song from Kings of Leon’s Aha Shake Heartbreak. I think I’ve told the story of how the album entered my life in posts before. Just click on that “aha shake heartbreak” or “kings of leon” tag at the bottom, and they’ll redirect you. The most recent Kings track I’ve posted about was ‘Slow Night, So Long’, also from the same album, and the tale of my experience with ‘Soft’ is almost exactly the same. It’s been a track on the “all songs” phone playlist for so long now, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment where it clicked and I thought it would be a song I’d be listening to for years. It would be a disservice to try and make some fairytale situation up. It’s just always been there, and that’s good enough for me.

‘Soft’ is the seventh track on Aha Shake… and mainly written to shut up critics who wouldn’t stop talking about the things the band got up to when they were out and about, on tour or whatever. Being the young rock ‘n’ roll band they were back in ’04, they do the rock ‘n’ roll things that hang out with models and party. The media loved that sort of stuff. Still do now. Caleb Followill had had enough of the coverage, so he wrote about an experience of one of those occasions where he was hanging out with a supermodel, but got too drunk that he couldn’t perform. He was soft. The whole track’s quite self-explanatory. Whether or not that led to critics talking less about the band, I’m not sure. But he wanted to write songs that were about the things people go through that are embarrassing or not taken seriously. And erectile dysfunction is definitely one of those subjects.

I once saw someone describe this track as Kings of Leon’s “most Strokes-ish song”. Or “Strokes-like”. One of those. And I kind of get that. The bright guitar lick that starts it off combined with the the rhythm guitar that joins in soon after does remind me of something that Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. would do. Though the reggaeton-like groove that plays underneath is definitely sets it apart. During the verses, Caleb Followill sings a line, Matthew Followill plays a guitar lick in response, and the choruses see the band rock out a little more, with Matthew Followill playing a climbing/falling guitar riff before falling into the reggaeton feel again. A big nod should also go to Jared Followill on the bass guitar, whose lines during the verses are probably the most hummable parts of the whole song. But I guess the big highlight of the track is the ending section where the band kinda go into double time, into party mode, with Caleb repeating the song’s last line and at an instance almost to the point where his voice completely breaks. All very nice. So here’s an Aha Shake era live performance of the track to round things off.