In July 1988, Warner Bros./Curb sent out a new Hank Williams Jr. single. It carried a title that people have spelled two ways ever since: “If the South Woulda Won” on the record, and “If the South Would Have Won” in many references. It is the same song. Williams wrote it himself and recorded it as the lead single from his album Wild Streak.
The single reached No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. It came at a high point in his career. The album it introduced reached No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart and was later certified Gold by the RIAA.
Where it came from
Williams is the sole credited writer. The track is the second cut on Wild Streak, which was released June 21, 1988. It runs 3:19. Barry Beckett, Jim Ed Norman and Williams produced it, as they did most of his records of the period.
The album was his forty-first studio release, and it followed Born to Boogie in 1987. Its title track was co-written with Terri Sharp. The second single, “Early in the Morning and Late at Night,” was released in November 1988 and was written by Troy Seals and Frank J. Myers. “If the South Woulda Won” is the one that kept drawing comment, though.
What the song is about
The song is a tongue-in-cheek alternate-history fantasy. Williams imagines himself as president of a Southern nation after a Confederate victory in the Civil War. He then runs through a wish list for a country he would lead. The list goes state by state and covers all the Confederate states plus Kentucky.
Much of the list is about regional pride and pop culture. It draws on food, music, drink and Southern accents. It also treats the deaths of Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline and members of Lynyrd Skynyrd as occasions for national holidays. The refrain nods to the folk anthem “Dixie.” The song also has a harder law-and-order side. One of its pledges is a Supreme Court in Texas with swifter punishment for murderers.
The performance is playful. It has a barroom swagger and a shout-along refrain. That swagger is a large part of why the song works as a live number, and it is also why it divides opinion.
A song that kept being argued over
The premise is a Confederate victory, so the song has always invited argument about its politics. A critic at The Nation used the song to challenge Williams’s public image. The piece came out after Williams’s comments comparing President Obama to Hitler, which led ABC to drop his song as the opening of its Monday Night Football broadcasts. The writer called the song a sign of where Williams’s outlook sat.
A 2016 USA Today profile noted that Williams still performed the song in concert. It described him as unrepentant about his opinions. Fans know him as “Bocephus,” and he has stirred controversy more than once.
Defenders of the song would say it is a novelty in the Southern-rock tradition, a joke told with a grin. Critics hear a nostalgia for the Confederacy that is hard to separate from the joke. Both readings have stuck with the record.
Place in the catalog
Within his catalog it sits between “Young Country,” a single from 1988 with guest vocals from artists including Steve Earle, Marty Stuart and Keith Whitley, and “That Old Wheel.” Those three singles came out in 1988. Together they mark the period when Williams was both a chart regular and a loud voice in country music.
The album carries a third cut worth knowing. It includes a version of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song, which fits the Southern-rock leanings of the title single.