Study Reveals Guitar Solo From Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" Main Cause Of Highway Pursuits, Pub Brawls

A recent report published by the Floyd Mayweather Institute for Gutting Homicides and Tussles (FIGHT) has laid the blame for the ever-rising rates of general lawlessness and hooliganism around the world squarely at the feet of rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd's 1973 smash hit "Free Bird", in particular the lengthy guitar solo which features 4 minutes and 42 seconds into the track. Drawing from a combination of thousands of local police reports, countless witness testimonies, and careful monitoring of historical online streams, FIGHT insinuates that the song's lasting popularity nearly half a century on has meant that otherwise calm and easily managed incidents (such as routine traffic stops and minor barside arguments) have increasingly escalated to the point of uncontrollable chaos as a direct result of the song's presence nearby. Nowhere is this more apparent, the report claims, than in the infamous Mankings Megachurch Maul several years prior; what began as an innocent teenage prank to replace the soothing ambient melody, which constantly played through the complex's many speakers, with the rock ballad in question quickly devolved into the largest documented fistfight in world history, the bloody frenzy claiming a grand total of 2,014 lives before a man directly thrown into an exposed breaker box shorted the entire building's circuitry and ended the murderous melody for good.

Predictably, the study's conclusions have proven incredibly divisive, with prominent politicians, celebrities, and average Joes alike all rushing to make their thoughts on the matter known - from holding so-called 'immunisation concerts' in order to weaken the song's effects through repeated exposure, to outright outlawing the band and every single one of their songs, no solution to the present crisis appears to be off the table. Most notably, Lynyrd Skynyrd itself issued a full public rebuttal of the report shortly after its release, promising its authors in no uncertain terms that they would, "(...)F****** FLAY THE SKIN FROM THOSE G****** A******* FOR DARING TO SAY OUR F****** SONGS F****** MAKE PEOPLE F****** VIOLENT AND UNHINGED". The authors in question were unavailable for comment at the time of publishing.