Greater than 50 years after its preliminary launch, Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Free Bird” has acquired its first official music video.
One of many Florida rock band’s most recognizable hits, “Free Bird” was initially launched in 1973 as a part of the group’s debut LP, Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Pores and skin-‘nérd. It shot up the charts over the following two years, touchdown within the Prime 20 of the Billboard Sizzling 100 by 1975. Since then, it has amassed over 773 million Spotify streams and seen covers by a variety of high-profile musicians, from Bob Dylan to Dolly Parton, the latter of whom featured a model of the monitor on her 2023 file Rockstar.
Directed by Knocked Free and Chloe Moriondo collaborator Max Moore, the nine-minute-plus facilities on an older man dusting off his photograph albums and reminiscing on a romance from his youth. The cinematic interpretation on the tune is much from the primary time “Free Bird” has soundtracked a filmed narrative—it’s featured in motion pictures like Forrest Gump, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Elizabethtown, and The Satan’s Rejects.
The brand new video follows the 2023 launch of an official lyric video for an additional one of many band’s key hits, “Sweet Home Alabama.” That video coincided with the discharge of a Fiftieth-anniversary field set, Fyfty, which compiled 50 tracks from the group’s profession. The alternatives ranged from early-career tracks Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded at storied rural Alabama studio Muscle Shoals, right through to stay recordings from their ultimate present with late guitarist Gary Rossington in 2022.
Reflecting on recording “Free Bird” in 2019, Rossington stated that whereas writing the monitor, vocalist Ronnie Van Zandt insisted on not writing down the lyrics to “Free Bird,” as an alternative having Rossington and Allen Collins play again the chorus just a few occasions whereas he wrote the total tune in his head. “After two or three times, all of sudden he said ‘What do you think about this,’” Rossington recalled. “Then he’d sing the whole song to you….He wouldn’t write it down. He thought if you couldn’t remember it, it wasn’t worth keeping.”
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