Haggard told
The Boot that he wrote the song after he became disheartened watching
Vietnam War protests and incorporated that emotion and viewpoint into song. Haggard says, "When I was in prison, I knew what it was like to have freedom taken away. Freedom is everything. During Vietnam, there were all kinds of protests. Here were these [servicemen] going over there and dying for a cause—we don't even know what it was really all about. And here are these young kids, that were free, bitching about it. There's something wrong with that and with [disparaging] those poor guys." He states that he wrote the song to support the troops. "We were in a wonderful time in America, and music was in a wonderful place. America was at its peak, and what the hell did these kids have to complain about? These soldiers were giving up their freedom and lives to make sure others could stay free. I wrote the song to support those soldiers." In a 2010 interview with
American Songwriter, Haggard called the song a "character study", his 1969 self being the character: "It was the photograph that I took of the way things looked through the eyes of a fool... and most of America was under the same assumptions I was. As it's stayed around now for 40 years, I sing the song now with a different attitude onstage... I've become educated... I play it now with a different projection. It's a different song now. I'm different now." Critic Kurt Wolff wrote that Haggard always considered what became a
redneck anthem to be a spoof, and that today fans—even the
hippies who are derided in the lyrics—have taken a liking to the song and find humor in some of the lyrics. Cover versions of the song were recorded by such
countercultural acts as the
Grateful Dead,
The Beach Boys,
Phil Ochs,
The Flaming Lips,
The String Cheese Incident,
The Good Brothers and
Hank Williams III backed by seminal
stoner metal band
The Melvins, all of which are and/or were avid users of
marijuana,
LSD, and other
psychedelic drugs that the song condemns. Written by Haggard and Roy Edward Burris (drummer for Haggard's backing band, and
The Strangers) during the height of the
Vietnam War, "Okie from Muskogee" grew from the two trading one-liners about small-town life, where conservative values were the norm and outsiders with ideals contrary to those ways were unwelcome. In the song, the singer reflects on how proud he is to hail from
Middle America, where its residents were patriotic and did not smoke
marijuana, take
LSD, wear
beads and sandals,
burn draft cards or
challenge authority. While it can be viewed as a satire of small-town America and its reaction to the antiwar protests and counterculture seen in America's larger cities,
Allmusic writer Bill Janovitz writes that the song also "convincingly [gives] voice to a proud, strait-laced truck-driver type... in the end, he identifies with the narrator. He does not position the protagonist as angry, reactionary, or judgmental; it is more that the guy, a self-confessed '
square', is confused by such changes and with a chuckle comes to the conclusion that he and his ilk have the right sort of life for themselves." ==Chart performance and popularity==