If one listens to the end of the song, though, they say “and the governor’s true” and in 1974, that was still George Wallace, so they criticized and supposedly praised him in the same song. Again, if Skynyrd’s was pandering to their audience and demographics, they should’ve decided which lane to stay in, like the Allman Brothers did. Then again, the Allmans were more of a deep, Southern “psychedelic blues band” than Lynyrd Skynyrd being more of a boogie, hard-rock band with a Southern “ethos” and “image culture” attached to them. Plus, Skynyrd wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” as a response to Neil Young’s stereotypical, cliched anti-South/anti-Wallace song, “Southern Man”, from 1970.