Birmingham

Album: Good Old Boys (1974)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song sounds like an autobiographical tribute to the city of his birth, but Newman was born in Los Angeles and spent his childhood oscillating between Los Angeles and New Orleans. In this song, he assumes the character of a steel mill worker in Alabama who oozes pride in his Birmingham heritage.
  • Good Old Boys is a concept album, and "Birmingham" is a typical offbeat Newman song written slightly tongue-in-cheek. Reviewer Sean Nelson described this and the other songs on the album as "heavily critical studies of trash, loonies, drunks, dirty politicians, and bigots." >>>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2
  • Newman wrote this song to flesh out the character he created in the song "Rednecks."

Comments: 1

  • Bill from UsLove the Joplin/Ragtime piano on this song, but what I really love is how they pop that pedal steal note before he sings about his wife. It sounds like something Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern could have written in the 30's too.
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