Only by the Night - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Critics

The album was met with mixed reviews. Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...

's average rating settled on a 63/100, counting a drastic range of ratings between North America and UK press. The U.S. online publications Pitchfork Media

Pitchfork Media

Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...

, PopMatters

PopMatters

PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...

and JustPressPlay gave the album a 3.8/10, 2/10 and 4/10 respectively, while the album received ratings of 5/5 and 4.5/5 from the UK's The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

and Virgin Media

Virgin Media

Virgin Media Inc. is a company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom...

. Record sales showed it chasing Coldplay

Coldplay

Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...

's Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, often referred to as simply Viva la Vida is the fourth studio album by British rock band Coldplay, released on 11 June 2008 on Parlophone. The album was named after a Spanish phrase that translates in English as "long live life"...

for the fastest selling album of the year in Ireland and the UK.

Awards and accolades

Only by the Night received a nomination for Best Rock Album at the 51st Grammy Awards

51st Grammy Awards

The 51st Annual Grammy Awards took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA on February 8, 2009. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were the biggest winners of the night, jointly winning five awards including Album of the Year and Record of the Year...

with the single "Sex on Fire" receiving two nominations for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best Rock Song. "Sex on Fire" was awarded with the Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals on February 8.

At the 52nd Grammy Awards

52nd Grammy Awards

The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards took place on January 31, 2010, at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Neil Young was honored as the 2010 MusiCares Person of the Year on January 29, two days prior to the Grammy telecast. Only ten of the 109 awards were received during the broadcast...

the song "Use Somebody

Use Somebody

"Use Somebody" is a song by the American alternative rock group Kings of Leon. It was the second single from the band's fourth studio album Only by the Night , released on December 8, 2008....

" won the Record of the Year

Record Of The Year

Record of the Year may refer to:*Grammy Award for Record of the Year*The Record of the Year, a British award based on public polling...

, Best Rock Song and the Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

The album was also awarded "2008 Album of the Year" by the UK's Q Magazine, as well as Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

voting it as the 20th best album out of their top 50 Best Albums of 2008. The album was also awarded Best International Album at the BRIT Awards

2009 BRIT Awards

The 2009 BRIT Awards ceremony took place on Wednesday 18 February 2009. It was the 29th edition of the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. The awards ceremony was held at Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London, and was broadcast live on ITV1 on 18 February at 8pm...

, the Meteors and the Juno Awards

Juno Awards of 2010

The Juno Awards of 2010 honoured music industry achievements in Canada for the latter part of 2008 and for most of 2009. These ceremonies were in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada during the weekend ending 18 April 2010...

Chart performance and sales

The album is a massive success in the United Kingdom. At the end of September 2008, the album entered the UK Albums Chart

UK Albums Chart

The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

at number one, with first week sales of over 220,000 copies. In February 2009, it was announced that Only by the Night is currently the biggest selling digital album of all-time in the UK, surpassing Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse

Amy Jade Winehouse was an English singer-songwriter known for her powerful deep contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B, soul and jazz. Winehouse's 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize...

's Back to Black
Back to Black
Back to Black is the second studio album by English recording artist Amy Winehouse, released on 27 October 2006 by Island Records. It is the last album released in her lifetime. The album incorporates 1960s soul music styles and modern R&B production, with subjective lyrics that concern...

. Sales for 2008, in which Only By The Night was the third biggest selling album of the year, were 1,181,640 and a similar level of 1,078,555 for 2009, when it became the fifth biggest selling album of the year. It sold a further 340,000 units in 2010 and was placed at number thirty-one on the year-end chart. As of March 27, 2011, Only By The Night has spent 131 consecutive weeks inside the Top 75, and is number fifty-eight on the current chart.

In Australia, the album has been certified 9× Platinum, selling over 630,000 copies. It re-entered the Australia charts at 43 in September 2010. The album was the highest selling album of 2008 in Australia. The album has also been a hit in New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, spending over thirty consecutive weeks in the top ten, including nine non-consecutive weeks at number one. It finished 2008 as the second highest selling album and has been certified 5× Platinum by RIANZ.

In the U.S. the album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200, but fell to twenty the following week. It then dropped as low as seventy-eight, but then gradually moved back up the chart. After fifty weeks on the chart, the album managed to outpeak its debut position, climbing to number four. It has also managed to achieve a 2× platinum certification for shipping two million copies.

In Germany, Only by the Night has spent 104 weeks on the country's Albums Chart making it the 50th album to spend 2 years or longer on that chart.

Worldwide sales of the album exceed 6.2 million copies, according to a press release by the band.

Track listing

All songs written by Kings of Leon; produced by Angelo Petraglia and Jacquire King unless otherwise specified.

Personnel

Caleb Followill – vocals
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

, rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
Matthew Followill – lead guitar
Lead guitar
Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...

, vocals, keyboards on Frontier City
Jared Followill – bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

, vocals
Nathan Followill – drums
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

, percussion
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

, vocals
Angelo Petraglia - keyboards
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...

on "Revelry"
Jacquire King - keyboards on "Use Somebody"

Charts

Chart	Peak position
Australia	1
Austria	6
Belgium (Flanders)	1
Belgium (Wallonia)	4
Canada	2
Denmark	5
Finland	6
France	38
Germany	16
Italy	51
Ireland	1
Mexico	27
Netherlands	10
New Zealand	1
Norway	8
Sweden	4
Switzerland	10
United Kingdom	1
United States	4

Certifications

End of year charts

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Country
! Chart
! Rank
|-
| rowspan=7|2008
| Australia
|Australian Albums Chart
| #1
|-
| Belgium
|Ultratop

Ultratop

Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts...

| #29
|-
| Ireland
|Irish Top 20 Albums 2008

Irish Recorded Music Association

Irish Recorded Music Association is the Irish record industry association. IRMA is a non-profit association set up to manage and control the music industry in the Republic of Ireland.-Goals and activities:...

| #12
|-
| New Zealand
|New Zealand Albums Chart

Recording Industry Association of New Zealand

The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand...

| #2
|-
| Netherlands
|MegaCharts

MegaCharts

MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top...

| #64
|-
| United Kingdom
|UK Albums Chart

UK Albums Chart

| #3
|-
| Worldwide
| IFPI
| #21
|-
! Year
! Country
! Chart
! Rank
|-
| rowspan=13|2009
| Australia
|Australian Albums Chart
| #7
|-
| Austria
| IFPI
| #37
|-
| Belgium
|Ultratop

Ultratop

Ultratop is an organization which generates and publishes the official record charts in Belgium, and it is also the name of most of those charts...

| #1
|-
| Canada
|Canadian Albums Chart

Canadian Albums Chart

The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS...

| #7
|-
| Denmark
| IFPI
| #17
|-
| Europe
| European Top 100 Albums
| #2
|-
| Germany
|German Albums Chart

Media Control Charts

The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie...

| #6
|-
| Ireland
|Irish Top 20 Albums 2009

Irish Recorded Music Association

| #12
|-
| New Zealand
|New Zealand Albums Chart

Recording Industry Association of New Zealand

The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand...

| #8
|-
| Netherlands
|MegaCharts

MegaCharts

| #10
|-
| Switzerland
| Media Control Europe
| #48
|-
| United Kingdom
|UK Albums Chart
| #5
|-
| United States
| Billboard 200

Billboard 200

The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...

| #11
|-
! Year
! Country
! Chart
! Rank
|-
| rowspan=4|2010
| Europe
| European Top 100 Albums
| #44
|-
| Germany
|German Albums Chart
| #96
|-
| United Kingdom
|UK Albums Chart
| #31
|-
| United States
| Billboard 200
| #50

Awards

Brit Awards

The Brit Awards are the British Phonographic Industry's annual pop music awards. The name was originally a shortened form of "British", "Britain" or "Britannia", but subsequently became a backronym for British Record Industry Trust...

|Won
|-
|Best Rock Album
| Grammy Awards
|Nominated
|-
|Best International Album
| Meteor Awards
|Won
|-
|Best Album
| NME Awards

NME Awards

The NME Awards is an annual music awards show in the United Kingdom, founded by the music magazine, NME .The first awards show was held in 1953 as the NME Poll Winners Concerts, shortly after the founding of the magazine....

|Won
|-
|Choice Music: Album (Group)
| Teen Choice Awards

Teen Choice Awards

The Teen Choice Awards, are an annual awards show that air on the Fox cable channel, that honor the year's biggest biggest achievements in music, movies, sports, television, fashion and more, voted by teen viewers aged 14 through 17. Winners receive an authentic full size surfboard designed with...

|Nominated
|-
| style="text-align:center;"|2010
|Best International Album
| Juno Awards
|Won
|-

Release history

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! style="width:150px;"|Country
! style="width:130px;"|Date
! style="width:120px;"|Label
! Format
! Catalogue #
|-
| Australia / Republic of Ireland
| September 19, 2008
| Sony / Sony BMG
| CD

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

/ RCA
| CD

Compact Disc

, download
| 88697351992
|-
| RCA Victor Europe

RCA Records

RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...

| LP

LP album

The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

| 732712
|-
| rowspan="2"|United States
| rowspan="2"|September 23, 2008
| RCA
| CD, download
| 88697-32712-2
|-
| Control
| 2xLP
| 40243
|-
| Brazil
| October 24, 2008
| Sony BMG
| CD

Compact Disc

, download
| 886973271223
|}

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