"Rednecks" is a song by

Randy Newman Randall Stuart Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist known for his Southern-accented singing style, early Americana-influenced songs (often with mordant or satirical lyrics), and vari ...

, the lead-off track on his 1974 album '' Good Old Boys''.

Lyrics and interpretation

"Rednecks" is sung from the perspective of a Southern "

redneck ''Redneck'' is a derogatory term chiefly, but not exclusively, applied to white Americans perceived to be crass and unsophisticated, closely associated with rural whites of the Southern United States.Harold Wentworth, and Stuart Berg Flexner, '' ...

". In it, he expresses his dismay at the way that the North looks down upon The South. In particular, the narrator describes his ire at watching a "smart-ass, New York Jew" mock

Lester Maddox Lester Garfield Maddox Sr. (September 30, 1915 – June 25, 2003) was an American politician who served as the 75th governor of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1967 to 1971. A populist Democrat, Maddox came to prominence as a staunch segregati ...

on a

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...

program. (This is an allusion to Maddox's 1970 appearance on '' The Dick Cavett Show'' whose eponymous host is actually a

gentile Gentile () is a word that usually means "someone who is not a Jew". Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, sometimes use the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is generally used as a synonym fo ...

from

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the so ...

.) In response to his frustration at the television show, the narrator goes on to list, sarcastically, a litany of negative qualities that Southerners are reputed to have. He focuses especially on institutionalized racism, or, as the narrator puts it: "keeping the

nigger In the English language, the word ''nigger'' is an ethnic slur used against black people, especially African Americans. Starting in the late 1990s, references to ''nigger'' have been progressively replaced by the euphemism , notably in cas ...

s down." As the song ends, the narrator criticizes northerners as hypocrites. He achieves this by singing that the "North has set the nigger free" and then sings

African-Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

are only "free to be put in a cage," and then lists a number of black ghettos in northern cities (e.g. Roxbury in Boston, East St. Louis and Harlem in New York City) The verse's final lyric is: "They he Northernersgatherin' 'em up, from miles around/Keeping the niggers down." Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Randy Lewis said Newman had "peeled back the curtain on... bigots and hypocrites" with this song. In 1995, Newman admitted that he was still nervous performing the song. A lengthy description of the Cavett broadcast is offered by author Steven Hart in his 2014 essay "He May Be a Fool But He's Our Fool: Lester Maddox, Randy Newman, and the American Culture Wars," which appears in the collection ''Let the Devil Speak: Articles, Essays, and Incitements''. Hart maintains that Cavett was, if anything, too diffident with Maddox, who played word games about the meaning of racism and segregation before "taking theatrical umbrage" and storming off the set only a few minutes before the end of the show. Newman felt differently, saying, "Now, I hate everything that he stands for, but they didn't give him a chance to be an idiot. And here he is, governor of a state—these people elected him in Georgia, however many million people voted for him—and I thought that if I were a Georgian, I would be angry." Newman later said it was one of many songs he may have, "done differently, in terms of tempo or arrangement. I did "Rednecks" a little square, maybe." Steve Earle recorded a cover of "Rednecks" in 2006 for the tribute album ''Sail Away: The Songs of Randy Newman''.

Newman's opinion

Newman has called "Rednecks" one of his favorite compositions. He said he wrote the song after watching Maddox's appearance with Cavett and "seeing him be treated rudely... they had just elected him governor, in a state of 6 million or whatever, and if I were a Georgian, I would have been offended, irrespective of the fact that he was a bigot and a fool." Newman said that having written "Rednecks" he felt he had to explain where he was coming from, which led him to write "Marie" and "Birmingham", two other songs that ended up on his '' Good Old Boys'' album. Newman seldom performs “Rednecks” in concert because it is liberally infused with the n-word.

References

{{Randy Newman Randy Newman songs 1974 songs Songs written by Randy Newman Political songs Satirical songs Song recordings produced by Lenny Waronker Songs about white people Songs against racism and xenophobia Songs about Georgia (U.S. state)