I was telling my wife about how much I like the song “Sweet Home Alabama” again this weekend. I have no reason to enjoy it as much as I do – I’ve never been to Alabama; I don’t take a side between Neil Young or Lynrd Skynrd; and I think Watergate probably would have bothered me (though I could see myself saying it didn’t, just to be a contrarian). I think that just like that it’s a song about a guy who’s proud of where he comes from, which I think is a nice thing.

We tried to think of other songs that were passionate “valentines” to a place where the singer hails from that were better than “Sweet Home Alabama”. I didn’t spend a long time thinking about this though, the only song that immediately came to my mind was “New York, New York”, which I don’t really like that much.

Aliza thought of a song called “I Love LA”, which I’d never heard of before, but instantly assumed must be terrible because it’s by Randy Newman. To try to sell me on it, Aliza pointed out that Chevy Chase was in the video, driving around in a car with Randy – but surprisingly that didn’t manage to sway me. She insists that she only thought of it as an example of this kind of song, and that she doesn’t like it either – but I know the truth now, that this is her favorite song of all time.



-- This is just a video made by a fan of the song. I couldn't find the actual video with Chevy Chase in it --