Sweet Home Alabama really grinds my gears. Neil Young sings about systemic racism in the south and Skynard retorts 'yea some people here are racist ♪ but not all of us are ♪ frig off Neil Young♪ whoa now look at the sky'.
Horse shit lyrics, sick composition.
But "Sweet Caroline" is problematic in a different way. From Wikipedia - "Diamond has provided different explanations for the song's origins. In a 2007 interview, he stated the inspiration for the song was John F. Kennedy's daughter, Caroline, who was 11 years old at the time it was released. Diamond sang the song for her at her 50th birthday celebration in 2007. On December 21, 2011, in an interview on CBS's The Early Show, Diamond said that a magazine cover photo of Caroline as a young child on a horse with her parents created an image in his mind, and the rest of the song came together about five years after seeing the picture. However, in 2014, Diamond said the song was about his then-wife Marcia, but he needed a three-syllable name to fit the melody."
He wrote lyrics about touching each other a few years after seeing her in a photo as a young child?
Lol, when I describe the song to people what I say is almost verbatim: "it sounds like they stumbled upon one really solid guitar riff and were like, fuck it, play that shit for the next 4 minutes! Umm is that gonna be enough for a song? Who gives a shit!"