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It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1974, becoming the band's highest-charting single. The story of "Sweet Home Alabama" begins not in Alabama but in Jacksonville, Florida. That's where, in 1964, five teenagers formed what would eventually become the iconic rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. It wasn't until five years after getting together that they finally settled on the name Lynyrd Skynyrd though, after their former P.E. Teacher Leonard Skinner who penalized guitarist Gary Rossington for his long hair because it was against the high school's policy. For people who think every white Southerner's favorite evening wear is a white sheet with burning cross as accessory, they can gloat over the stupid hicks in this film.
In 1972, the band, then comprised of lead vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, drummer Bob Burns, guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington, bassist Leon Wilkeson, and keyboardist Billy Powell released their first self-titled album, followed by another, Second Helping, in 1974. Called "Sweet Home Alabama," the single reached number eight on U.S. charts—its popularity due, at least in part, to a controversy hidden in the verses. Lynyrd Skynyrd had recorded demos in Muscle Shoals with Johnson as a producer/recording engineer in 1971 and 1972, and Johnson helped refine many of the songs on the Pronounced album. "Sweet Home Alabama" was a major chart hit for a band whose previous singles had "lazily sauntered out into release with no particular intent." The hit led to two television rock show offers that the band declined. In addition to the original appearance on Second Helping, the song has appeared on numerous Lynyrd Skynyrd compilations and live albums. As Jay Skurski of the Buffalo News noted, the stadium sent Tagovailoa home with the song “Sweet Home Alabama” playing over speakers soon after the game ended.
Sweet Home Alabama
New York fashion designer Melanie suddenly finds herself engaged to the city's most eligible bachelor. But Melanie's past holds many secrets, including Jake , the redneck husband she married in high school, who refuses to divorce her. Bound and determined to end their relationship once and for all, Melanie sneaks back home to Alabama to confront her past, only to discover that you can take the girl out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the girl. Melanie returns to her parents' house where her father walks in with Andrew. They decide to have the wedding in Alabama and Andrew's mother comes down from New York. On her wedding day, as she is walking down the aisle, her lawyer shows up and explains that Jake has signed the divorce papers, but she has not.
She tells him they are still married, they return to what would have been Melanie and Andrew's reception, and finally, have their first dance as husband and wife. Sophisticated Melanie Carmichael, a rising New York clothing designer suddenly finds herself engaged to the city's most eligible bachelor. She has skeletons in her fashion-filled closet that include Jake - the backwoods husband she married in high school who refuses to divorce her. Determined to end their marriage and sever all ties with her past once and for all, Melanie returns to Alabama.
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The nickname "The Swampers" was coined by producer Denny Cordell during a recording session by singer/songwriter Leon Russell, in reference to the band's "swampy" sound. At the time, it had the highest September opening weekend, surpassing Rush Hour. For a decade, the film would hold this record until 2012 when Hotel Transylvania took it. By the end of its run in the United States, Sweet Home Alabama grossed over US$130 million, and another US$53,399,006 internationally.
Melanie tells him that she did not marry Andrew because she wanted to be with him so that she could kiss him whenever she wanted too. As Jake and Melanie kiss, Wade, the town sheriff, interrupts them by taking them back Jake's mother's bar, where all of their friends and family are waiting. The story is a love triangle involving two childhood Alabama sweethearts who married but became estranged, Jake Perry and Melanie Smooter , and Melanie's boyfriend of 8 months, Andrew Hennings . After learning to fend for himself, the boy has to protect his house against two bumbling burglars who are planning to rob it. But others interpreted the lyrics as a reminder to Young that not all Southerners are the same.
Check out a couple recent videos of the band performing…
When things don't turn out the way she planned them, she realizes that what she had before in the south was far more perfect than the life she had in New York City. During Melanie and Andrew's wedding at the Carmichael estate, a lawyer arrives and halts the ceremony. She and Andrew wish each other well, though Kate berates Andrew and insults Melanie, her family, and the entire town, for which Melanie punches her in the face. Melanie finds Jake at the beach planting lightning rods in the sand during a rainstorm to create more glass sculptures.
This story is part of American Anthem, a yearlong series on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to action. In May 2006, National Review ranked the song #4 on its list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs. In 2002, the song inspired the title and plot of the film Sweet Home Alabama.
Andrew arrives to surprise Melanie, but upon learning her true background and that she never told him she was married, he angrily leaves. He later returns, saying he still wants to marry her, and the wedding is immediately set in motion. While visiting a nearby restaurant/resort with a glassblowing gallery, they admire the glass sculptures that are similar to ones they have seen in New York. The song remains a staple in southern and classic rock, and is arguably the band's signature song. Live video"Sweet Home Alabama" on YouTube"Sweet Home Alabama" is a song by American southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, released on the band's second album Second Helping . It was written in response to Neil Young's 1970 song "Southern Man", which the band felt blamed the entire South for American slavery; Young is name-checked and dismissed in the lyrics.
Melanie decides to not sign the papers, and that she does not want to marry Andrew, because she still loves Jake, which Andrew understands. She runs away from her wedding to go find Jake, who is on the same beach where, years ago, ten-year-old Jake had told her that he wanted to marry her "so I can kiss you anytime I want." In the present day, Melanie is a successful New York fashion designer who has adopted the surname "Carmichael" to hide her poor Southern roots.
Then it goes to present day with Melanie now a successful fashion designer in New York City. When she becomes engaged to Andrew, the son of the mayor of New York City, Melanie announces that she has to go back home alone to Alabama to tell her parents in person. Melanie visits Jake, who has repeatedly refused to sign divorce papers over the years since she left for New York. After he orders her out of his house, Melanie empties Jake's checking account, hoping to spur him into ending the marriage. Angry, Jake leaves to meet some friends at a local bar without signing the papers.
After wealthy Andrew Hennings proposes, Melanie returns to Alabama to announce her engagement to her parents and finalize a divorce from her husband Jake, whom she married as a pregnant teenager and left after she miscarried their baby. Meanwhile, Kate Hennings, Andrew's mother and the Mayor of New York City, doubts Melanie's suitability to wed her son, whom she is grooming to run for President of the United States. Jake refuses to divorce her until one night she gets drunk and explains to everyone in the bar that the reason she married Jake was because she was pregnant, and she later had a miscarriage. When she wakes up the next morning, the divorce papers are laying on her bed signed by Jake. The film starts at a beach in Alabama during a thunderstorm with two children chasing each other who kiss but get struck by lightning.
The song is credited to Matthew Shafer, Waddy Wachtel, R.J. Ritchie, Leroy Marinell, Warren Zevon, Edward King, Gary Rossington and Ronnie Van Zant. Since "All Summer Long"'s release, the original song has also charted at number 44 on the UK Singles Chart. In a sequence of them Melanie's parents are "scared" by a punk with a pierced tongue, Mel's co-worker from the beginning of the movie, who comments on her accent when she dreams. A young woman who has reinvented herself as a New York City socialite must return home to Alabama to obtain a divorce from her husband after seven years of separation.
Wynn's Pond in Sharpsburg, Georgia, is the location where Jake lands his plane. The historic homes shown at Melanie's return to Pigeon Creek were shot in Eufaula, Alabama. Although centered in a fictional version of the town of Pigeon Creek, near a fictional version of Greenville, Alabama, the film was mostly shot in Georgia. The Carmichael Plantation, which Melanie tells the reporter is her childhood home, is the Oak Hill Berry Museum, a historic landmark in Georgia which is near the campus of Berry College in Rome, Georgia. Katharine Towne was cast as Witherspoon's character's assistant who ultimately ends up marrying the Patrick Dempsey character, but all other scenes were dropped in the final cut. A mid-credits sequence shows that they have a baby daughter, Melanie continues to thrive as a designer, and Jake opens a "Deep South Glass" franchise in New York.
Melanie follows and gets drunk, insults her old school friends, and outs her longtime friend, Bobby Ray. Jake scolds her and takes her home, preventing her from driving drunk, and Melanie wakes to find the signed divorce papers on her bed. These musicians, who crafted the "Muscle Shoals Sound", were inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1995 for a Lifework Award for Non-Performing Achievement and into the Musicians' Hall of Fame in 2008.
"We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two," Van Zant later said. "Don't forget what your good book said/ Southern change gonna come at last/ Now your crosses are burning fast." Young had expressed his disappointment with racism in the South in two songs, "Southern Man" and "Alabama". The Judge—a 2014 film with a similar plot of a protagonist with a successful big city career drawn back to an old hometown. Jake's glassblowing shop was filmed at an old mill named Starr's Mill, in Fayette County, Georgia.
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