Music As Intertext: Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young

William J. Bauer, English

By analyzing lyrics and music from the songs “Southern Man” and “Alabama” by Neil Young and “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, released in the 1970’s, I illustrate the power of the artist who is rhetorically situated in a time and place. Hart and Daughton in Modern Rhetorical Criticism argue, “One way of discovering the context within the text is to inquire into the intertextual aspects of a message” (47). I argue that these songs are, in fact, rhetoric of social commentary and critique.

    This presentation seeks to enlarge the concept of song as social commentary by showing the intertextuality of the songs noted above, two of which commented on the American South, the third of which commented on the first two. Together these rhetorical acts form a dialogue of contending ideologies in American social and cultural life.