A song by Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd that first appeared in 1974 on their second album, Second Helping. It reached #8 on the US charts in 1974, and was the band's second hit single.The famous \"Turn it up\" line uttered by Ronnie Van Zant in the beginning was not intended to be in the song. Van Zant was simply asking producer Al Kooper and engineer Rodney Mills to turn up the volume in his headphones so that he could hear the track better.There is a semi-hidden vocal line in the second verse after the \"Well, I heard Mr. Young sing about her\" line. In the left channel, you can hear the phrase \"Southern Man\" being sung lightly (at approximately 0:55). This was producer Al Kooper doing a Neil Young impression and was just another incident of the band members messing around in the studio while being recorded. According to Leon Wilkeson, it was Kooper's idea to continue and echo the lines from \"Southern Man\" after each of Van Zant's lines. \"Better...keep your head\"...\"Don't forget what your / good book says\", etc. But Van Zant insisted that Kooper remove it, not wanting to plagiarize or upset Young.\" Kooper left the one line barely audible in the left channel.Ed King, Ronnie Van Zant and Gary Rossington were the songs composers. \"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.
