Sweet Home Alabama
"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. The following excerpt shows the Neil Young mention in the song:
In his 2012 autobiography "Waging Heavy Peace", Young commented on his role in the song's creation, writing "My own song 'Alabama' richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record. 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".
My Home's in Alabama (song)
"My Home's in Alabama" was originally recorded at LSI studios in 1978, and the full, unedited version was included on the band's independent release, THE ALABAMA BAND #3. When the band signed with MDJ records as a singles act and started working with producer Harold Shedd, the song was edited, and strings (Kristin Wilkinson & the WIRE CHOIR), harmonica (Terry McMillan) and additional keyboards (Willie Rainsford) were added by the Harold Shedd production team. It was then released as a single in January 1980 by MDJ Records, a small independent label that had also released Alabama's first "Billboard magazine" Hot Country Singles Top 40 single, "I Wanna Come Over" in the fall of 1979. The success of "My Home's in Alabama" (and the prior song) earned the group an invitation to the "New Faces" show at the annual Country Radio Seminar in Nashville, Tennessee. The resulting performance earned them a contract with RCA Records, to which they signed in April 1980.