YMMV / Lynyrd Skynyrd

• Epic Riff: "Sweet Home Alabama", "Free Bird", among many others.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The band's 1977 album Street Survivors was released three days before the plane crash, and the front cover featured the band standing on a street while flames surround. It was changed shortly after, to a picture of the band standing in a spotlight from the same photo shoot.
  • "That Smell", a song about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, written as a response to founding guitarist Gary Rossington getting into a single-car wreck while under the influence, and warning to others not to follow the same path. In 1986, the band's other founding guitarist, Allen Collins, was paralyzed when he got into a wreck while driving drunk, and ultimately died of complications from the injury four years later. Really, lyrics like "the smell of death surrounds you" and "tomorrow might not be here for you" are particularly wrenching given that it was released just days before Van Zant's death.
• Heartwarming Moments: "Simple Man"
  • After the tragic plane crash, Neil Young performed "Sweet Home Alabama" on his tour in the victims' honor.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "FREEEEE BIIIIIIRD!"^Explanation At the end of the band's first Live Album, One More from the Road, Van Zant asks the audience what they'd like to hear; when the crowd requests "Free Bird", the band launch into a nearly 15-minute rendition of it (edited down to 11:30 due to the limitations of vinyl). The success of the album and the memorable segue into the track resulted in "Free Bird" becoming a popular tongue-in-cheek request at live shows by any musician, regardless of whether or not the song is appropriate for their style.
  • "Sweet Home Alabama" became the punchline to incest jokes in early 2019, as a way to poke fun at the incestuous Deep South stereotype. It was one before as well, but nowhere near as big until then.
  • In mid-2022 it suddenly became popular to post videos of 3D rat(s) spinning or rotating whilst the guitar solo of Free Bird plays in the background.
  • In a similar vein, thanks to its inclusion in the Signature Scene for Kingsman: The Secret Service, people have been putting Free Bird over several other memorable fight scenes.
  • "But officer/Your Honor, Free Bird was playing"^Explanation The solo in "Free Bird" goes so hard and fast that it's practically impossible to avoid reaching dangerous levels of speed if you hear it while driving. It is commonly joked that the urge to accelerate to supersonic speeds when the Free Bird solo comes on is so powerful and primal that police officers and courts will universally accept "Free Bird was playing" as a valid excuse for speeding, regardless of how much catastrophic damage was caused in the process.
• Misaimed Fandom: "Sweet Home Alabama" faces this on two fronts.
  • The song has been embraced by some White nationalists and other far right groups as an explicit defense of racial segregation and Southern values, ignoring the nuances of the passages, such as the often ignored "Boo!" line after the mention of then governor George Wallace. Both songwriter Ronnie Van Zant and producer Al Kooper expressed their disdain for the noted segregationist George Wallace, who himself recanted his racist views later in life.
  • The song was written as a defense of the southern way of life. You wouldn't know that since the song is often used to mock southern stereotypes, especially incest to the point where the song is synonymous with incest jokes.
• Pandering to the Base: Their more recent work is generously peppered with right-wing political ideology that mainly appeals to older white southerners.
• Signature Song: Too close to call between "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird". The former is probably better known among the greater public, but the latter is more revered as a rock classic. Then, there's also "Simple Man" which, while not released as a single, is very close in popularity, and is also regarded as a classic in rock music history.
• Tear Jerker: "Free Bird", "Tuesday's Gone", "Simple Man"
  • A genuine Tear Jerker moment: In January of 1979, the surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd reunited at a Charlie Daniels concert and played "Free Bird" — the only song they would perform that night — as an instrumental, while the spotlight focused on an unattended microphone.
  • In interviews that ask about the plane crash, all the members from that time have always been (understandably) very emotional when recounting it. On their episode of Behind the Music, keyboardist Billy Powell nearly broke down while revealing that Cassie Gaines literally bled to death as he held her.
  • Garry Rossington's final live recorded performance of "Free Bird" during their "Celebrating 50 Years of Lynyrd Skynyrd" concert at the Ryman Auditorium on November 13, 2022. The video for the said performance ended with the following statement:
    "In Loving Memory of Gary Rossington, our leader, partner, bandmate, friend, husband, and partner. Your music, legacy, and spirit will live on forever. Always play it pretty. We love and miss you!"
• Tough Act to Follow: The band's classic-era albums with Ronnie Van Zandt. The band made more albums without Ronnie than with him, but none of their latter-day material is anywhere near as well-known. Four of the five Ronnie albums have gone platinum, but none of their post-Ronnie albums have even gone gold.
• Values Dissonance:
  • "Free Bird" sounds to modern ears like a celebration of being commitment-phobic: "For I must be traveling on, now / Cause there's too many places I've got to see ... I'm as free as a bird now / And this bird you cannot change."
  • "Saturday Night Special" can seem a bit strange in a modern context, as it's specifically calling out the dangers of handguns (especially the cheap one the title refers to, but also in general) apart from firearms in general. This was a somewhat common stance in the 1970s, but the evolution of US gun culture and many high-profile shootings with semi-automatic rifles has made things much more divisive. Modern debates on gun control tend to focus little on restrictions for handguns vs longarms.
  • "Sweet Home Alabama" was written in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and the de facto end of racial segregation following the passing of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, when the Southern identity was beginning to be questioned, but Van Zant believed that there are still some good aspects in it. By the 2010s, the concept of Southern pride was damaged by high-profile incidents such as the 2015 Charleston church shooting and 2017 Unite the Right rally, leading to removals of Confederate statues and flags across the southern USA.

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