Sweet home alabama

“ Sweet Home Alabama ” is a song by Lynyrd Skynyrd from her second studio album Second Helping (1974) ^[2] .

The song praises " Alabama's Sweet Home, where the skies are so blue" (despite the fact that the songwriters are not from this state - Ronnie Van Zant from Florida, but Ed King from California), but in the broad sense - the whole American South and its inhabitants with their specific mentality.

Songfacts writes about the song:

Some of the poems of this song are injections in the direction of Neil Young : I hope Neil Young will remember Southern man doesn't need him at all I hope Neil Young will remember A southern man don't need him around anyhow Young [by then] wrote songs like “Southern Man” and “Alabama” (Alabama), in which people in the American South were racist and stuck in the past. Lynyrd Skynyrd replied [song] with “Sweet Home Alabama,” a song about southern pride and all the good things in Alabama.

The following verse of the song, starting with the words, also causes a lot of controversy:

In Birmingham they love the governor, (boo! Boo! Boo!)

Now we all did what we could do

("In Birmingham, they (the southern people) love the governor. Now we have done everything we could.")

Shortly before recording the song, George Wallace , who had a reputation as a reactionary and racist, was once again elected Governor of Alabama. In this regard, these lines, depending on the sympathies or antipathies of the interpreter, could be interpreted as praise to the freedom-loving Alabamans who made their choice despite attacks by their candidates from the "northern liberals" (the sarcasm of the following lines is clearly directed towards them: "Me Watergate they don’t care, but what do you think about this? "- in the sense that their northern politicians are no better, anyway), or vice versa as the irony addressed to them (and in the line" We did what we could "there is even a hint of attempt on Wallace in 1972, in p as a result of which he was paralyzed). Van Zant himself stated that he had "little in common" with Wallace (especially because of his attitude to blacks), and the author was critical of him, as the triple disapproving "boo!" in his song after saying about the governor.

In the USA, the song reached 8th place in the "Hot Hundred" of Billboard Hot 100 magazine ^[2] .

In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed the song “Sweet Home Alabama” performed by Lynyrd Skynyrd in 396th place on its list of “ 500 Greatest Songs of All Time ” ^[3] . In the 2011 list, the song is at 465th place ^[4] .

In 2009, the original Lynyrd Skynyrd single with this song (released in 1974 via Sounds Of The South / MCA Records ) was admitted to the Grammy Awards Hall of Fame ^[5] .

In addition, the song “Sweet Home Alabama” performed by Lynyrd Skynyrd, along with another song, “ Free Bird ”, is part of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll list compiled by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ^[6] .