three Alabama songs

(none of which should be confused with "Alabama Song" by The Doors)

History lessons have a way of sneaking up on you.

I'd never really caught the lyrics to "Sweet Home Alabama" before, but we sang it at Singing last night, and there they were:

"Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don't need him around anyhow"

I had previously been struck by the several songs about Alabama, and suddenly realized that there were no coincidences here. "Sweet Home Alabama" (http://www.lyrics007.com/Lynyrd%20Skynyrd%20Lyrics/Sweet%20Home%20Alabama%20Lyrics.html) was a response to Neil Young's "Alabama" (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/n/neil+young/alabama_20099012.html), just as Warren Zevon's "Play It All Night Long" (http://www.metrolyrics.com/play-it-all-night-long-lyrics-warren-zevon.html) was a response to "Sweet Home Alabama".

Now, one of the other singers said that "Sweet Home Alabama" was actually a response to Neil Young's "Southern Man" (http://www.lyricattack.com/n/neilyounglyrics/southernmanlyrics.html), which is if anything more brutal in criticism of Southern race relations than is "Alabama", although it also doesn't happen to target "Alabama".

Wikipedia, in fact, says that they were responding to both of the Neil Young songs:

Controversy

"Sweet Home Alabama" was written as an answer to two songs, "Southern Man" and "Alabama" by Neil Young, which dealt with themes of racism and slavery in the American South. "We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two," said Ronnie Van Zant at the time.[2]

(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sweet_Home_Alabama&oldid=380844223)

The above quote might also be used to put an interesting spin on Zevon's song, which might be paraphrased to say "Nope, I'm pretty much okay with shooting all of the ducks."

To put things into context, it's probably best to note that while Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd were both writing within a couple years of each other in the 70s, Zevon was writing much later (~20 years unless there's an earlier publication of his song that I haven't found info for Edit: A friend just did a bit of legwork and came back to say that it looks like Zevon's song probably came out sometime around 1980.).

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