[dixie]

Originally Posted by tapu

Last night's was:

What's the story in "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia"?
Who killed Andy?
What happened to the girlfriend?
Why does it say the Sheriff has blood on his hands?
And whose sister is singing? Was she involved in any way??

Incidentally, this is one of the only songs I will sing karaoke style.

A young woman tells the story of her unnamed older brother who returns home after a two-week trip from a place called "Candletop." The brother meets his best friend, Andy Wolloe, at Webb's Bar ("Andy Wolloe said hello, and he said, 'Hi, what's doing, Wo?'"), and Andy informs the brother that his young wife (who is later described as "cheatin'") has been seeing another man in town, Seth Amos. Andy then reveals that he, too, has been sleeping with his friend's wife. The brother is understandably upset, which scares Andy, who leaves and walks home. The brother assumes his wife has left town, gets his gun, and heads out to the back woods to sneak up on Andy and confront him. When the brother arrives at Andy's house, he finds tracks outside ("tracks that were too small for Andy to make") and discovers that someone has already killed Andy. The brother, in a moment of panic ("he started to shake"), fires his gun in the air to summon a passing sheriff. When the sheriff approaches the scene, the brother is immediately accused of murder. A "backwoods Southern lawyer" doesn't keep the sheriff and a judge from convicting the brother in a kangaroo court ("the judge said 'guilty' in a make-believe trial / slapped the sheriff on the back with a smile"), and hang him that same night, effectively lynching him. This was apparently the same night of a statewide electrical blackout, although the phrase "the night the lights went out in Georgia" could refer to the fact that the "light" of justice went out that night as an innocent man was killed by the law.

In the final verse, the singer then reveals that she was the one who killed Andy and that she had also previously killed her promiscuous sister-in-law and disposed of her body ("one body that'll never be found"), and that her brother was lynched before there was a chance to tell anyone the truth.

Beyond simply the typical police corruption, the song relates that the judge is just as corrupt as the sheriff ("...the judge in the town's got bloodstains on his hands"), as well as heartless, when rendering the guilty verdict: slapped the sheriff on the back with a smile, said "Supper's waiting at home and I gotta get to it" (The 1991 music video for the Reba McEntire version suggests that the judge was also sleeping with the wife and wouldn't listen to the truth to protect himself).