Sweet Home Alabama

Sweet Home Alabama

Lynyrd Skynyrd

On his 1970 album After the Gold Rush, Neil Young wrote a song called “Southern Man,” which described the racism in the South as he saw it after visiting there.

I saw cotton
And I saw black
Tall white mansions
And little shacks
Southern man
When will you
Pay them back?

Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” as a response to “Southern Man” and as a way to show rock fans that the South was not the racist land of protracted slavery that Canadians at the time felt that it was. People often believe Lynyrd Skynyrd to be typical, Southern Conservatives because of where they come from, but let’s keep in mind here that these guys named their band after a gym teacher who thought they were flowery hippies who needed to cut their hair.

In his 2012 biography Waging Heavy Peace, Young finally recanted “Southern Man,” a full thirty-five years after LS frontman Ronnie Vant Zant’s death.

I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending, not fully thought out, and too easy to misconstrue.

The song is a staple of the Classic Rock and AOR radio formats and something of an anthem for the state and its various sports teams, even making its way onto a recent Alabama license plate design!