Lyrics to
Alabama

This version of Alabama was released by Neil Young in 1972.

Our About Neil Young page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Alabama from 1972 as well as all of the other lyrics from Neil Young that we have in our lyrics database.

Here's more interesting things in songs and lyrics tied to Neil Young or about the 1970s in general.

Oh Alabama
The devil fools
with the best laid plan.
Swing low Alabama
You got spare change
You got to feel strange
And now the moment
is all that it meant.

Alabama, you got
the weight on your shoulders
That’s breaking your back.
Your Cadillac
has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track

Oh Alabama
Banjos playing
through the broken glass
Windows down in Alabama.
See the old folks
tied in white ropes
Hear the banjo.
Don’t it take you down home?

Alabama, you got
the weight on your shoulders
That’s breaking your back.
Your Cadillac
has got a wheel in the ditch
And a wheel on the track

Oh Alabama.
Can I see you
and shake your hand.
Make friends down in Alabama.
I’m from a new land
I come to you
and see all this ruin
What are you doing Alabama?
You got the rest of the union
to help you along
What’s going wrong?

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Neil Young has released many songs over the years besides Alabama. Neil Young released songs from 1969 to 2007 spanning across albums like Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young, After The Goldrush, Harvest, Journey Through The Past, Time Fades Away, On The Beach, Tonight's The Night, Zuma, Long May You Run, American Stars & Bars, Comes A Time, Rust Never Sleeps, Hawks And Doves, Re-ac-tor, Trans, Everybody's Rockin', Old Ways, Landing On Water, Life, This Note's For You, Eldorado, Freedom, Ragged Glory, Harvest Moon, Lucky Thirteen, Sleeps With Angels, Mirror Ball, Broken Arrow, Silver & Gold, Prairie Wind, and Chrome Dreams II. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Neil Young.

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About Lyrics and Alabama by Neil Young

When you decide to study the lyrics to Alabama, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1972 song by Neil Young. Some of the lyrics to Alabama have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Neil Young and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to Alabama if you take apart the structure of the words. The word "lyric" itself derives from the Latin word lyricus, with the actual English word lyrics applied to the definition "words set to music" listed in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Continuing the chain, the Latin word lyricus derives from the Greek word λυρικός or lyrikós. This somewhat means "poetry accompanied by the lyre" or "words set to music." You can easily see that by looking at the background of the word lyric, that the "lyrics to Alabama" means the words set to the music of Alabama, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Neil Young. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song. However, the singular form lyric is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics. Hence, by this analysis of word structure, you could say that the lyric to Alabama and the lyrics to Alabama are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Neil Young who came here looking just for the lyrics to Alabama, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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