"Sweet Home Alabama" is a song by American southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, released on the band's second album Second Helping (1974). It was written in response to Neil Young's 1970 song "Southern Man", which the band felt blamed the entire South for American slavery; Young is name-checked and dismissed in the lyrics. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1974, becoming the band's highest-charting single. The song remains a staple in southern and classic rock, and is arguably the band's signature song.