You Hear Georgia

Album: You Hear Georgia (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Georgia rockers Blackberry Smoke reflect on how some people lean on stereotypes when forming their attitudes towards people from the South.

    Frontman Charlie Starr laments about how people have preconceived opinions of him because of his Southern accent.

    You hear "Georgia" when I open my mouth
    Don't make no difference what I'm talking about


    There is also an inherent snobbish attitude towards Southerners because of their supposed simple outlook because of their religious and political views.

    You see "Georgia" when you look down on me
    From the top of that mountain where you'll always be
  • Starr wrote this song after watching a TV interview involving a person with a thick Southern accent. "It made me smile. And I thought, 'I wonder if everybody else around the world is hearing what he's saying, or how he's saying it,'" he explained to The Boot.

    Starr reflected on how Hollywood portrays Southerners "as these poor, barefoot, inbred, uneducated people full of hate." And his "archetypical southern" grandmother, who was the complete opposite, being full of kindness and compassion.
  • The answer that Blackberry Smoke offers is for people to listen properly to real Southerners.

    But you know you can't believe everything you read
    A hammer and a block of stone, singing that tired old song
    Maybe you could find a new harmony
    If you hear "Georgia"
  • This is the title track of Blackberry Smoke's seventh studio album. After self-producing their two previous records, 2016's Like an Arrow and 2018's Find a Light, the band recruited their fellow Georgian, Dave Cobb, to produce You Hear Georgia.
  • It was Cobb who encouraged Starr to complete the song when he was playing around with a possible idea on their penultimate day of tracking. Cobb noticed him noodling in a corner of the studio, and the producer told him to finish it. After Blackberry Smoke recorded the song the next day, he suggested "You Hear Georgia" as an album title.

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