12/20/2023 0 Comments Sweet home alabama meaningIt has the massive hit single Heart of Gold, and critcally acclaimed tracks like The Needle and the Damage Done, and Old Man. It’s Young’s fourth solo album, and will top the charts around the world. The biggest selling album of the year, in North America, is Neil Young‘s Harvest. Then, just as so often happens now, there are no African-American actors nominated for the main prizes. Atari launches its first video game, Pong.Īt the Oscars the best film goes to The French Connection (other nominations include A Clockwork Orange and Fiddler on the Roof), while the best soundtrack award goes to Isaac Hayes for the theme to Shaft. Internationally it’s the year of the Munich terrorist attacks, the second Cod War between Great Britain and Iceland, and Bloody Sunday in Ireland. It’s an election year – Richard Nixon will go on to a landslide victory against the Democratic Party candidate George McGovern, despite the developing Watergate story. To set the stage, let’s take a step back, just a year, to 1972. To answer whether Sweet Home Alabama is a racist song, we’ll have to try to step into that moment, or in fact various moments. If Sweet Home Alabama captures a moment, then it’s interesting to examine what kind of moment that might be, given that it has become the musical equivalent of the confederate flag for fans it’s a song taking pride in southern culture, for many others it’s racist overture, an anthem from and for a group of rednecks. Indeed, the band would later talk about how quickly the song came together. From Van Zant’s intro – a fortunate recording accident, he was actually telling producer Al Kooper to turn up the microphone in his headphone mix, while the tape was rolling – onwards it sounds like you’re there in the studio with the band, live in that moment. There is something unquestionably immediate about the song, its simplicity, and its energy. An electric moment in a song that will become legendary, and which will propel the Florida band up the charts on its release in 1974. The year is 1973, and in Studio One, Dooraville, in Atlanta, Georgia, Ronnie Van Zant, the lead singer and guiding light of Lynyrd Skynyrd mutters ‘Turn it up’ into a microphone.
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