More than 50 years after its initial release, Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Free Bird” has received its first official music video.
One of the Florida rock band’s most recognizable hits, “Free Bird” was initially released in 1973 as part of the group’s debut LP, Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd. It shot up the charts over the next two years, landing in the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 by 1975. Since then, it has amassed over 773 million Spotify streams and seen covers by a number of high-profile musicians, from Bob Dylan to Dolly Parton, the latter of whom featured a version of the track on her 2023 record Rockstar.
Directed by Knocked Loose and Chloe Moriondo collaborator Max Moore, the nine-minute-plus centers on an older man dusting off his photo albums and reminiscing on a romance from his youth. The cinematic interpretation on the song is far from the first time “Free Bird” has soundtracked a filmed narrative—it’s featured in movies like Forrest Gump, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Elizabethtown, and The Devil’s Rejects.
The new video follows the 2023 release of an official lyric video for another one of the band’s key hits, “Sweet Home Alabama.” That video coincided with the release of a 50th-anniversary box set, Fyfty, which compiled 50 tracks from the group’s career. The selections ranged from early-career tracks Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded at storied rural Alabama studio Muscle Shoals, all the way through to live recordings from their final show with late guitarist Gary Rossington in 2022.
Reflecting on recording “Free Bird” in 2019, Rossington said that while writing the track, vocalist Ronnie Van Zandt insisted on not writing down the lyrics to “Free Bird,” instead having Rossington and Allen Collins play back the refrain a few times while he wrote the full song 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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