Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: The Boys Are Thirsty In Atlanta

There’s an art to making a great cover of a song, and one of my favorites is the Supersuckers’ version of Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down” from Smokey and the Bandit.

It stays completely true to the spirit of the original, so it’s not a jokey take like Me First and the Gimme Gimmes or anything. But it still gives everything a much-needed update, and it’s my favorite version of a song that’s too good to get lumped in with all the corniest parts of the late 1970s.

Something that hasn’t changed much since the late 1970s: the boys in Atlanta are mad thirsty. But really, can you blame them? You can’t even take your car into the shop down there without being surrounded by the hottest mechanics wearing next to nothing.

People in the rest of the country had no idea this was going on until OutKast documented the conditions in the video to “The Way You Move”.¹Yeah, I know OutKast had a lot of songs that directly referenced Atlanta that probably would’ve been better, but this is my third favorite song by them. ²“Hey Ya” (of course) and “The Rooster” are first and second.

• 1
  Yeah, I know OutKast had a lot of songs that directly referenced Atlanta that probably would’ve been better, but this is my third favorite song by them.
• 2
  “Hey Ya” (of course) and “The Rooster” are first and second.