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".
Reese Witherspoon
In 2002, after the success of "Legally Blonde", Witherspoon starred in several roles, such as Greta Wolfcastle in "The Simpsons" episode "The Bart Wants What It Wants", and as Cecily in the comedy "The Importance of Being Earnest", a film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play in which she received a Teen Choice Award nomination. Later that year, she starred with Josh Lucas and Patrick Dempsey in Andy Tennant's film "Sweet Home Alabama", where she played Melanie Carmichael, a young fashion designer who intends to marry a New York politician but must return to Alabama to divorce her childhood sweetheart, from whom she has been separated for seven years. Witherspoon regarded this as a "personal role" in that it reminded her of experiences she had when she moved from her hometown Nashville to Los Angeles. The movie became Witherspoon's biggest live-action box office hit, earning over $35 million in the opening weekend and grossing over $127 million in the U.S. Despite the commercial success, critics gave "Sweet Home Alabama" negative reviews. It was called "a romantic comedy so rote, dull and predictable" by "The Miami Herald", and the press widely agreed that Witherspoon was the only reason the movie attracted such a large audience. When describing Witherspoon's role in the movie, "The Christian Science Monitor" concluded, "She is not the movie's main attraction, she is its only attraction."